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The Aims of religious
education
THE PROCEEDINGS OF
THE THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION
OF THE
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
BOSTON, 1905
THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS
EDUCATION
^Vi OF p/i;jicf=
MAY 23 1911
A
THE PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION
y OF THE
Religious Education Association
BOSTON
FEBRUARY 12-16, 1905
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CHICAGO
EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE ASSOCIATION
153 LA SALLE STREET
1905
COPYRIGHT, 190S
BY THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
TO
MRS. CYRUS H. McCORMICK, SENIOR,
THROUGH WHOSE GENEROSITY
ITS PUBLICATION WAS MADE POSSIBLE
CONTENTS
ADDRESSES AND DISCUSSIONS
General Theme: THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
ADDRESSES AT GENERAL SESSIONS
PAGE
The President's Annual Address ---------3
President Charles Cuthbert Hall
The Annual Survey of Progress in Religious and Moral Education - - 9
President William Herbert P. Faunce
Subject: How Can we Bring the Individual into Conscious Relation with God?
The Direct Influence of God upon One's Life ------ 20
Bishop William Eraser McDowell
The Bible as an Aid to Self-discovery - - -25
President Henry Churchill King
The Church as a Factor in Personal Religious Development - - - 29
Bishop William Lawrence
Religious Education as an Aid to Conscious Relation with God - - - 33
Mr. Loring Wilbur Messer
Subject: How Can We Develop in the Individual a Social Conscience?
Literature as an Expression of Social Ideals ----•' 2)7
Professor Arthur S. Hoyt
Science as a Teacher of Morality --------40
Professor John Merle Coulter
The Ethical Education of Public Opinion -------47
President Henry Smith Pritchett
Discussion — -
Professor Henry S. Nash - - - - - - -52
Professor William E. B. Du Bois - - - - - Si
Dr. Samuel M. Crothers 55
Subject: Hoiv Can We Quicken in the Individual a Sense of National and
Universal Brotherhood?
The Sacredness of Citizenship ---------56
President William J. Tucker
The Mission of Christianity to the World -------60
President Charles Cuthbert Hall
V
vi CONTENTS
ADDRESSES AT DEPARTMENTAL SESSIONS
THE JOINT SESSION OF DEPARTMENTS
PAGE
Subject: The Place of Formal Instruction in Religious and Moral Education
In the Home --.-..-....67
President G. Stanley Hall
In the Sunday School -..-____. .71
Dr. Everett D. Burr
In the Young Men's Christian Associations ------ 76
Professor George Albert Coe
In the Public School 80
Mr. George H. Martin
In the Preparatory School - - - - - - - - -82
Rev. Endicott Peabody
In the College ------------84
President George Harris
/. THE COUNCIL OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
President's Address on the Work of the Department for the Year - - - 86
Dean Frank Knight Sanders
The Field of Religious Education in America ------ go
Professor Clyde W. Votaw
The Co-ordination of Agencies within a Religious Community - - - 96
Dr. William C. Bitting
What Co-operation is now Possible in Religious Education between Roman
Catholics and Protestants? -_..--.. 102
Professor Thomas J. Shahan
The Bible and Government Schools in the Philippines _ - - _ 107
Dr. Simeon Gilbert
II. UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES
What can Universities and Colleges do for the Religious Life of their Stu-
dents? - - - - - - - - - - - -no
President William R. Harper
Mr. Roy Smith Wallace
Discussion —
President Henry Churchill King - - - - - 115
An Experiment in Religious Instruction in a College - - - - -117
President William De Witt Hyde
What can Music do for the Religious Life of Students? - - - - 121
Professor H. C Macdougall
CONTENTS vii
///. THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES
PAGE
The Annual Survey of the Work of Theological Seminaries _ . _ 124
President William Douglas Mackenzie
Discussion—
Professor George E. Horr
Professor Alfred W. Anthony
The Decline in the Number of Students for the Ministry - - - - 135
President Alfred T. Perry
Discussion —
Professor Williston Walker
Shall a Committee be Appointed to Report on the Curricula of Theological
Seminaries, with a View to Establishing Larger Uniformity ? 143
Professor Melancthon W. Jacobus
IV. CHURCHES AND PASTORS
Subject: Educational Aitns 0} the Church
Christ as a Teacher ----------- 147
Bishop D. A. Goodsell
The Church as an Educator ----- - _ . 148
Rev. Albert W. Hitchcock
Culture Courses in Churches - - -- - - - - - 152
Dr. E. E. Chi vers
Discussion —
Rev. Edward Cummings
Rev. John R. Gow
Subject: The Educational Aims of the Pastor
The Pastor as Teacher ----.._._. ijg
Dr. Everett D. Burr
The Pastor as an Educator ---------- 163
Dr. Cornelius H. Patton
Adequate Intellectual Expression, by the Pastor, of the People's Spiritual
Experience - - - - - - - - - - - -165
Dr. Charles S. Macfarland
Discussion —
Rev. W. a. Wood 168
V. SUNDAY SCHOOLS
The Annual Survey of Sunday School Progress - - - - - -171
Rev. Pascal Harrower
viii CONTENTS
PAGE
The Church's Problem of the Religious Education of Its People - - - 177
Professor Irving F. Wood
Dr. J. T. McFarland
President William Douglas Mackenzie
Discussion —
Dr. Lemuel Call Barnes ..----- 183
Mrs. Clara B. Beatley .-.-.-- 185
Principles Underlying the Sunday School Curriculum ----- 188
Mr. Patterson Du Bois
Dr. F. N. Peloubet
The Cultivation of Worship in and through the Sunday School. Report of
the Committee ----------- 194
Professor Waldo S. Pratt
Discussion — ----_--_.--- 197
Rev. George F. Nason
Miss Lucy Wheelock
Popular Bible-study by Coirmiunities -------- 202
Rev. C. a. Brand
BibUography of Books and Lessons for the Sunday School. Report of the
Committee ------------ 207
Dr. George W. Mead
Rev. William W. Smith
The Scope and Purpose of the Sunday School Exhibit - - - - 216
Dr. Richard Morse Hodge
VI. SECONDARY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
What Changes Should be Made in Public High Schools to Make Them
More Efl&cient in Moral Training? - - - - - - -219
President G. Stanley Hall
Discussion —
Head Master Frederic Allison Tupper
Has the Reading of Greek and Latin Literature any Effect, Favorable or Unfa-
vorable, upon the Morals of Pupils? - - - - - - -225
Prlncipal William T. Peck
Discussion —
Principal Eugene D. Russell
The Study of English Literature as a Means of Implanting High Moral Ideals 232
Mr. D. O. S. Lowell
CONTENTS
Discussion —
Mr. a. J. George
The Aims and Processes of Moral Development - - . - - 239
Head Master Frank H. Robson
VII. ELEMENTARY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Subject: The Foundations of Religion and Morality
How Far, and How, Can the Foundations of Religion be Laid in the Common
Schools? - - - - 245
Professor Edwin D. Starbuck
Dean Sarah L. Arnold
What Moral Equipment May the Community Reasonably Demand of the
Graduates of the Common Schools? ...--- 253
Mr. Walter H. Small
The Indirect Education of the Will 258
Professor Herman H. Horne
Subject: Tested Methods of Inculcatifig Religion and Morality
Religionsunterricht and Its Results - - - - - - - -261
Mr. Edward O. Sisson
Oriental Customs with Respect to the Inculcation of Religion and Morality
1. In China 267
Hon. Chester Holcombe
2. In India ....------- 271
Dr. Robert A. Hume
IX. TEACHER-TRAINING
Subject: The Training of Sunday School Teachers
The Sunday School Teacher- training Accomplished by the Hartford School
of Religious Pedagogy - - - - - - - - -276
Dean Edward H. Knight
The Sunday School Teacher-training Accomplished by the Secretarial Insti-
tute and Training School of Chicago - - - - - - -279
President John W. Hansel
The Sunday School Teacher-training Accomplished by the Alberta Sunday
School Association - - - - - - - - - -281
Rev. Charles H. Heustis
The Sunday School Teacher-training Accomplished by the Sunday School
Union of the Methodist Episcopal Church ------ 283
Dr. Jesse L. Hurlbut
Dr. J. T. McFarland
X CONTENTS
PAGE
Subject: The Education Required for Sunday School Teaching
The Nature and Extent of the Pedagogical Training Necessary for Sunday
School Teachers ----------- 285
Professor J. S. Street
The Character and Scope of the BibUcal Knowledge to be Expected of Sun-
day School Teachers - - - - - - - - - -289
Professor William G. Ballantine
X. CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS
Annual Survey of the Progress of Religious Education in Young Men's Chris-
tian Associations and Young Women's Christian Associations - - 293
Mr. Walter M. Wood
Bible-study in Young Women's Christian Associations - - - - 298
Mrs. J. S. Griffith
Mrs. Charles N. Judson
The Religious Education, of Boys -------- 302
Mr. Edward P. Kaighn
Outlines of a Course of Study in Philanthropies ----- 305
Professor H. M. Burr
XI. YOUNG PEOPLES SOCIETIES
A More Comprehensive Basis for the Union of Young People in their Socie-
ties ------------- 309
Dr. Spenser B. Meeser
Discussion ------------ 315
Mr. William Shaw
What the Missionary Societies are Doing to Interest the Young People in
Missions - - - - - - - - - - - -318
Mr. S. Earl Taylor
Missionary Literature and Young People - - - - - - -321
Mr. W. Henry Grant
XII. THE HOME
The Part of the Home in Religious Education ------ 324
Professor Charles R. Henderson
How can We Develop a Growing Consciousness of God in Cliildren and
Youth? 330
Miss Alice E. Fitts
The Continuity of Rehgious Education ...---- 335
Mrs. William D. MacClintock
CONTENTS xi
PACE
The Growth of the Larger Sense of Social and Civic Responsibility in Youth 339
Professor Edwin D. Starbuck
Plans for the Work of the Home Department for the Coming Year - - 344
Mrs. A^rDREW MacLeish
XIII. LIBRARIES
Annual Survey of the Religious and Ethical Work of Libraries - - - 345
Librarian Drew B. Hall
The Moral Value of Reading - - - 348
Librarian William I. Fletcher
Principles Governing the Choice of Religious and Theological Books for Pub-
lic Libraries - - - -- - - - - - - 352
Librarian George F. Bowerman
The Public Library and the Sunday School - - - - - -356
Librarian Sam Walter Foss
Librarian Hiller C. Wellman
The Need of Professional Libraries to Maintain the Standards of Our Ministry 361
Librarian George A. Jackson
XIV. THE PRESS
How can the Press Educate the Public Respecting the Progress and Meaning
of the Missionary Movement? - - - - - - - -365
Mr. Silas McBee
The Sunday Press as Related to Moral and Religious Education - - - 367
Mr. J. L. Sewall
The Relation of the Religious Press to the Popularization of Bible-study - 371
Rev. F. a. Bisbee
XV. CORRESPONDENCE INSTRUCTION
The Place and Possibilities of Correspondence Instruction in Religious Educa-
tion ------------- 374
President Frank W. Gunsaulus
A Survey of the Correspondence Courses at Present Available for Religious
Education --- 379
Rev. Jesse L. Cuninggim
The Classification of Correspondence Courses - - - - - -385
Miss Georgia L. Chamberlin
XVI. SUMMER ASSEMBLIES
Summer Sunday School Institutes -------- 390
Rev. E. Morris Fergusson
xii CONTENTS
PAGE
Biblical Instruction at the Summer Assembly ------ 395
Professor Herbert C. Willett
The Summer Assembly and the Moral Instruction of Children - - - ' 399
Dr. William Byron Forbush
XVII. RELIGIOUS ART
The Treatment of Church Interiors -------- 403
Mr. Ralph Adams Cram
The Treatment of Church Exteriors -------- 407
Mr. James Sturgis Pray
The Educative Power of Organ Music ------- 412
Mr. George A. Burdett
The Educative Value of the Art of the Great Painters 41S
Rev. Henry G. Spaulding
Artistic Studies in Theological Seminaries ------- 418
Professor Waldo S. Pratt
THE GENERAL ALLIANCE OF WORKERS WITH BOYS
Subject: The Boy in the Country
The Problem of the Country Boy -------- 429
Rev. Herbert A. Jump
The Chivalric Idea in Work with Boys - - - - - - -433
Rev. Frank L. Masseck
The Civic Idea in Work with Boys -------- 436
Principal Myron T. Scudder
Subject: The Boy in the City
A Country School and Camp for City Boys ------- 439
Principal Edward A. Benner
The Juvenile City League of New York ------- 442
Mr. William C. Langdon
Federating Church Boys' Clubs in Cities ------- 445
Dr. Edward J. Houston
The Brooklyn Church Athletic League ------- 449
Mr. George J. Fisher
Discussion —
Mr. E. Stagg Whitin
Ten Years of Work with Boys: A Retrospect and Forecast - . - 454
Dr. William Byron Forbush
CONTENTS xiii
PAGE
The Minutes of the Convention -------- 461
The Officers of the Association - 483
The Members of the Association ------- 495
Subject Index 519
\
THE THIRD CONVENTION
ADDRESSES AND DISCUSSIONS
THEME
THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
ADDRESSES AT GENERAL SESSIONS
THE PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL ADDRESS
PRESIDENT CHARLES CUTHBERT HALL, D. D.
UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK CITY
The Dean of Yale Divinity School, my honored predecessor in the
Presidency of the Rehgious Education Association, said, in the address
with which he opened the Second Convention, " The opportunity be-
fore the Rehgious Education Association is boundless. The year to
come is the critical year of the organization." The year of which Dean
Sanders prophesied is ended. We have passed the crisis — and we live.
There are crises which men pass unconsciously, swept over them on
the high tide of destiny, knowing but in retrospect or in theory the
peril of the way. There are also moments and years of critical testing
through which men go, open-eyed, measuring well the risks they take,
feehng every ounce of the burdens they bear, yet enduring as seeing
Him who is invisible. If the year just ended has been, as the former
President predicted, the critical year of the organization, those to whom
was intrusted the management of its affairs were not unconscious of
risks and burdens. There were places in the year where to move for-
ward was an act of faith in the value of a principle.
Many hopes were centered in the General Secretary, both in the
oflfice and in the man. The office of General Secretary is the natural
medium of communication between the Association and the country.
Of the incumbent of that office it was hoped that, joining excellence
of character with devotion to an ideal, he would become the incarnate
expression of the principle for which the Association stands. But it
was otherwise ordered. Reasons of conscience caused him to recon-
sider his purpose to make this his life work, and in November the first
General Secretary resigned, to enter another field of labor. We are
grateful for what he did in his brief term of service; we are sure of his
loyalty to the cause of Religious Education; we bid him Godspeed. For
months the office of General Secretary stood vacant. It is now filled
by one who enters it attended by many hopes and desires that, having
clear vision of the goal, with courage and strength for the way, he may
live to see the glorious result of a movement that has been begun in
prayer, chastened by misunderstanding, sustained by self-sacrifice,
3
4 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
animated by love. The circumstances just related nullified for the past
year the field-work which had been planned. The General Secretary
for a work Hke this must be an apostle in labor, a statesman in vision.
His field is the country; Ms parish the mind of the American people.
He must penetrate into states; discover and co-ordinate the purposes
of like-minded citizens; arouse the local press; turn the hearts of the
fathers to the children. He must make friends in every city for the
cause we have at heart. He must preach the gospel of re-
Hgious education until that preaching is reahzed by the high-minded
and the patriotic as a career opening before men of culture and feehng,
who would protect the country from perils born of its own prosperity,
and rescue from the overlay of a ponderous materiahsm the spiritual
ideals of the founders of the Republic. Of this we have been, deprived
during our year of crisis. From our appeal to the country the chief
voice has been lacking, as it shall not be lacking, please God, in
the year to come. No wonder, then, that our results, in some things,
are less than we hoped.
The past year has not witnessed the solution of our financial prob-
lem. The solving of that problem could not be expected to occur in
advance of settled conditions in the office of General Secretary, and
this for obvious reasons. Large popular membership is our natural
source of income. The ReHgious Education Association is an affair of
the people. Behind it are no wealthy promoters. It has access to no
secret channel of supply. It sprang from the patriotic convictions of
educators, and educators are not blessed with great riches. They are
men of the people, and on the people they must depend. But, in the
absence of a General Secretary, it has been impossible to approach the
people, and to secure the adequate co-operation of that powerful and
generous interpreter of popular movements, the newspaper press. The
people have not known, and to-day they do not know, the moral excel-
lence, and the practical reasonableness, of our principle. Had they
known, their patriotism and good citizenship could absolutely have
been depended upon to provide, through popular member-
ships, our modest income. When the people understand, they will
respond, not grudgingly nor of necessity, but with the cheerfulness
that God loves. It might well be that such conditions of disadvan-
tage and delay would shake an enterprise standing upon weak and
shallow foundations, or would dissipate energy enhsted on the side
of umeality. In the hot fires of our modern life, the wood, the hay,
the stubble of irrational dreams soon perish. Nor were the men by
whom this movement was conceived of a temper to tolerate the
THE PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL ADDRESS 5
burdens that it has entailed, were those burdens not esteemed to be
imposed by God. Their lives were full of other cares, and com-
mitted to other interests. From this movement they had nothing to
gain for themselves but further weariness and the probability of being
misjudged by some.
Yet disadvantage and delay brought them no sense of insecure
purpose, no suggestion of doubt. The year of testing disclosed the
impregnable foundations of the idea itself, and the moral commit-
ment of its apologists. It knit them together in oneness of purpose,
in the sweet communion of a true and good intention.
They reflected that, in the hardships of its earlier years, the Reli-
gious Education Association follows the experience 'of other movements
now advanced to prosperity and intrenched in the public confidence.
When, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, men Uke Wilberforce
and Charles Grant were advocating the duty of EngUsh Christians
to estabUsh missions in the Orient, that the leading ideas of the faith
of Jesus Christ might be planted as an incorruptible seed in the
religious consciousness of the East, their proposals were ignored by
some, resented by others, laughed to scorn by many. When the
National Education Association arose in this country, its founders
endured with patience a baptismal period of popular indifiference and
financial dearth. It may be doubted whether any of the greater
causes by which content and balance have been added to civilized
life have reached the stage of efficiency unchastened by the discipline
of delay.
Furthermore, it is to be remembered that delay is a relative term,
formidable in one set of relations, inconsiderable in another. The
delay of a moment in acute illness may mean death. The delay of a
year in the Ufe of a man may mean heartbreak, irreparable loss.
But moments and years count for little, relatively, in the lives of great
institutions, in the evolution of great ideas. Men are impatient; God
is patient. Men who are filled with an idea want to see its full
fruition, its universal adoption, in their lifetime; God "buries His
workers, and carries on His work."
Unmoved, therefore, by secondary disadvantages and delays, prob-
able, if not wisely desirable, in the incipient stage of an important
undertaking, the ofl&cers and departmental workers of the Religious
Education Association have come up to this Convention in joy and
hope born of results so profound in themselves, and so prophetic, that
our superficial delays and drawbacks are for the moment forgotten.
During the year we have witnessed two results : The growth of the
6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
influence of our idea upon the public mind, and our own advance tow-
ard the better definition of it. These results have appeared simulta-
neously; yet, in the order of thought, the first has antedated, and must
have antedated, the second. The idea must lay hold of men before
the definition of it is possible. By this token we believe in the great-
ness, the divineness, of our undertaking. The details of small and
transitory movements may be grasped at the outset. Those to whom
God gives the vision of great movements must have time to think
themselves clear. Initial exactness of definition belongs to the small
utilities of life. Vague sublimity is the first stage in the manifesta-
tion of great conceptions of living. Men feel that ideas are true
before they can define wherein that truth resides.
The fundamental idea of the Religious Education Association has
increased in influence upon the public mind during the last twelve-
month. Upon those who have stood nearest to the idea, and have
been working toward its clearer definition, the increase of its influence
over themselves has been very striking. Not infrequently it happens
that men think they see land, to find, on drawing nearer, that it was
mirage flickering on an empty ocean. But they who thought they
saw the uprising of substantial duty in a call to bring rehgion into
right relation with every form and channel of popular education know
to-day that this was not ethical mirage, but plain reahty. They see
that the intellectual development of this country is advancing rapidly
and upon an enormous scale. They see that the mand of the Ameri-
can people lends itself to education as the outcome of hberty. They
see that all educational avenues, from those leading to the state and
private universities to those leading to the public schools, are thronged
with armies of the finest and most promising youth that the world has
ever seen; youth unfettered by political and military despotism; un-
weighted with the pessimism of Oriental traditions; intuitively con-
scious of its own rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;
keen and quick to learn. They see that libraries, magazines, news-
papers are as bread to the body, the natural food of these happy, hope-
ful generations. They see that flliteracy, superstition, cruelty, abomi-
nable habits of ignorance, anarchy, the devils that possess backward
and unlettered races, are exorcised from national life by the amazing
potency of education, and that our sons and daughters are growing
up in intellectual sanity, prepared to build a broader civilization than
the founders dreamed of, and to count for a positive force in the life of
the world.
This educational development manifestly is of God. We are reap-
THE PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL ADDRESS 7
ing from the good seed that the fathers sowed; and the fathers were
men of God. They believed in the value and in the liberty of the in-
dividual. They believed in the right of a man to become what God
intended him to be. They believed that government exists for the
good of all, and that the conception of a democratic state is in accord
with the genius of humanity and the intention of the Almighty Mind.
But God-given liberty and God-given education carry with them no
guaranties of public welfare, save those vested in God. The gift with-
out the Giver might be more than barren; even power without respon-
sibility, freedom without principle, knowledge without reverence. The
liberalizing influence of education cannot be depended upon, apart from
religion, to protect a populous nation from debasement of ideals and
from aberration of ethical judgment. Knowledge, absolved from the
fear of God, may, by sharpening the senses, promote selfishness, not
less brutal because outwardly refined. Great prosperity may become
barbaric materialism in a land where men teach their youths everything
except to worship God. The defense of a nation from such a doom is
furnished by no external authority, civil or ecclesiastical. It emerges
out of the enlightened conscience of the people, which, as if intuitively,
bears witness that the time has come when public morality and public
interest demand stronger accent on the religious aspects of education.
For this does our Association exist. This is its fundamental idea; the
vision that for three years has attended us, continually growing more
distinct, continually extending its sphere of influence over other minds.
The sublimity of an idea, while it may work for inspiration, lacks
practical effectiveness so long as it lacks definition. Men may be con-
vinced that religion in education is vital, and that the cultivation of the
religious sense in youth is indispensable; but to translate that convic-
tion into wise and fruitful methods of action demands the broad study
of conditions. The situation takes on apparent simplicity in lands
where Church and State are united, and the propagation of religion is
guaranteed under a royal establishment. In a land like ours, where
religious Hberty, tolerance, and individualism are universal, where the
estabhshment principle is unknown, where every man may worship
God or refrain from worshiping Him, according to the dictates of his
conscience, the problem of Religious Education takes on majestic
reality. It challenges the attention of all lovers of the coun-
try and lovers of the world. It invites the co-operation not only
of all who stand on the side of religion as against secularism, but
also of those high-minded secularists who, dissenting from the form of
reHgion, yet show themselves not uninfluenced by its spirit. Step by
8 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
step, year by year, this Association realizes more clearly and defines
more intelligently the end in view and the ways to that end. As it
advances on the path of definition, its thinking becomes more, and not
less, individualistic. Not that it fails to see the results of modern
social thinking, not that it is slow of heart to beUeve the divine
significance of the social philosophy and the social message of Jesus
Christ, but that it knows that the root of the matter involves the
relation of the individual to God. So long as the hfe of the individual
is ahenated from the life of God, whether by wicked works or by
ignorance, so long must there remain in all our schemes for social
redemption and social progress an element of ominous unreaHty. We
must interpret God to men and bring men to God, or dream of
building a house without a foundation. " The fear of Jehovah is the
beginning of wisdom."
The main lines of thought projected in this Convention spring from
this root — the relation of the individual to God. Those who shall
take part in these deliberations have come, with unparalleled gener-
osity, every man at his own charges, asking and receiving no other
compensation than the joy of service in a noble cause. They beheve,
and in their utterances will seek to show, that from the right relation
of the individual to God, from the root of vital religion, spring moral
forces which, taken up into the system of education, are competent to
regulate the whole field of Uving. Personal righteousness, social re-
sponsibility, pubhc service in the nation and in the world, follow, as
effect from cause, the ennobling influence of an educational system
transfused with the sense of God. Long ago, in the seat of Grecian
culture, he who was apostle, philosopher, and statesman declared:
"We are His offspring. In Him we Hve and move and have our
being." To reaUze this and to make provision for it on behalf
of our own children and our children's children is the first requisite
and the final aim of Religious Education.
THE ANNUAL SURVEY OF PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS
AND MORAL EDUCATION
PRESIDENT WILLIAM H. P. FAUNCE, D. D.
BROWN UNIVERSITY, PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND
No one can attempt a general survey of the condition of moral and
religious education in America without becoming acutely conscious of
the inherent difficulties of the task. The age in which we live, taught
by many failures, has learned to distrust swift and easy generalizations.
It prefers the microscope to the telescope. It has insisted on division of
labor in the intellectual as in the industrial realm, and, absorbed in
the investigation of individual objects, events, or movements, is quite
wiUing to leave to the future those great co-ordinations and syntheses
for which the present day feels so keenly its incompetence.
We have also to remember that statistics and formal reports can
never adequately record moral and religious conditions. The report
of a superintendent of the public schools can be made fairly concrete
and exact. The number of pupils enrolled, the number of periods
spent in recitation per week, the number who successfully pass exami-
nations, the amount invested in laboratories and Hbraries — these facts,
properly tabulated for a series of years, and reduced to percentages,
may give a fairly accurate idea of the growth and efficiency of the
school. But a report on moral and religious development cannot thus
be reduced to diagrams and tables. It deals with forces peculiarly intan-
gible, subtle, and elusive. There is somewhat involved of which we
cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. Such a report must
be, on the whole ,'quaUtative rather than quantitative. It has to do
with ideals and atmosphere rather than with certificates and diplomas.
It must be a series of impressions, rather than a statement of per-
centages, since it deals with "thoughts hardly to be packed into a
narrow act." The essential facts of religious growth usually escape
the census taker, and must be felt in order to be known.
I. The most cursory review of the past year makes it clear that
these twelve months have been, in the field we are studjdng, a time of
unprecedented agitation and activity. In the correspondence which I
have had with leaders of rehgious thought and action in all parts of
the country, the unanimous report is one of stir, fermentation, and
incessant debate. The slumbers of years have been broken. Com-
placency is abolished. The disciples of the status'quo no longer dominate
9
lo THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
the entire situation. A "divine discontent" has spread throughout
the land.
I. The Sunday school has been heard asking in many places the
old question, "What lack I yet?" and our generation has been smitten
with a general conviction of educational sin. Religious denominations
have constantly discussed the true function of their academies and
private schools, and have reorganized their societies for ministerial aid.
Churches have been led to exalt the teaching function of the ministry,
and pastors have in many regions been led to experiment with classes
for pastoral instruction and training. The publishing-houses have
teemed with all kinds of "helps," manuals, primers, studies, com-
mentaries, and histories, of all grades of efficiency or deficiency. Theo-
logical seminaries have felt the quickening, and yielded, in some cases,
to new ideals.
New organizations have been formed for Bible study. One of these,
the American Bible League, held its second public convention in Bos-
ton in December. During the sessions of three days, about twenty
addresses were delivered on Biblical subjects, and great interest was
manifested both by the speakers and the public. Membership in
the League is limited to persons signing a statement as to certain con-
clusions already reached regarding the Scriptures, and a series of text-
books is to be issued explaining and defending such conclusions.
Certainly, all sincere and genuine investigation is to be welcomed. We
have learned to tolerate various types of study and to rejoice in all
sincere endeavor to interpret the sacred writings. It is impossible that
the needs of the eighty millions in the Republic should be met by
any one type of study or student. If men and women are induced by
any method whatever to expose their minds day after day to the message
of apostles and prophets, therein we rejoice and will rejoice. The spirit
of contempt is as unpedagogical as it is un-Christian. Any attempts
are better than indifference and inertia. But indilTerence has been
steadily vanishing.
The past year has been marked by unusual evangelistic effort
on the part of many churches, both in America and in Great Britain.
Spiritual awakenings of peculiar power have been witnessed in various
cities, and great multitudes have become conscious of the unseen and
eternal. If we may judge from the past, such movements are sure to
be followed by zeal in education. In the white heat of religious con-
viction were born most of the educational institutions of the Church.
We cannot forget that three of the greatest evangelists of tlie nineteenth
century — Charles G. Finney, Charles H. Spurgeon, and Dwight L.
PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS AND MORAL EDUCATION ii
Moody — gave their closing years largely to the founding of Christian
schools which are still their enduring monuments. Out of those who
have felt the breath of religious aspiration this past year, we may
expect many to become educational leaders and founders. One of our
great needs is to achieve in America what has long been seen in Great
Britain, the union of candid, patient scholarship with genuine fervor in
religious and philanthropic endeavor.
2. A second noteworthy tendency of the past year is the growing
sense of the underlying unity of all agencies aiming at moral and
religious development. To quote words applied by President McKinley
to another subject: "The era of reciprocity has come." For men to
stand apart forever in religious education simply because by inheritance
or by preference they differ in liturgical forms or philosophical explana-
tions or theological formulas, while their fundamental aims are one,
is to entail upon our generation enormous educational loss as well as
moral enfeeblement. We are coming every year more deeply to realize
that we must be broad enough to make room for broad men, and toler-
ant enough to tolerate the intolerant. Differences in definition or mode
of approach to common problems must not be allowed to erect insuper-
able barriers between men whose objects and aspirations are identical.
3. A third characteristic of the past year is the growing demand
for contact with reaUty in religious, as in intellectual, education. In
the intellectual realm the change in this direction has been the most
noteworthy advance of the last quarter-century. In all elementary and
secondary education, and in all college and university courses, the ten-
dency has been steadily away from words to things, from symbol to
object, from text-book to laboratory, from learning by rote to learning
by doing.
It is impossible that this change in the method of education should
not be felt in the religious realm. It is now believed that "the whole
duty of man" cannot be learned merely from the catechism, but that
"if any man will do, ... he shall know." There is a growing
distrust of the a priori and dogmatic method, and a willingness to
examine candidly and patiently the ultimate facts. There is a generally
increasing desire to face all facts in psychology, in literary criticism, in
historical research, in natural science, with the conviction that no
truth, adequately tested and fearlessly proclaimed, can ultimately dam-
age either morality or faith. The conviction is everywhere growing that,
in the words of James Russell Lowell, "the universe of God is fire-proof ,
and it is quite safe to strike a match." If this passion for reality has
led in some instances to unconventional expressions of religious faith,
12 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
and to movements which it is difficuk to understand and classify, yet on
the whole we have come to see that any kind of expression and aspira-
tion is better than the sleek apathy and stagnation which is content
with outer correctness and is destitute of moral dynamic.
4. There is a general acknowledgment on the part of educators that
the children and young people of our time are deficient in the sense of
the imperativeness of both morality and religion. Our children are
more alert, sensitive, and observant in realms of nature and art than
ever before; their senses are trained at an early age; their interests are
many and diversified; their powers are awakened and stimulated by
novel and striking methods of teaching; the contact of the school with
society is closer than ever. But the sense of duty is not so profound
as formerly, and the moral law seems less majestic and commanding
than to a former generation. "Our greatest weakness," writes one New
England college president, "is a lack of decision and strength in the
assertion of rightful authority, and a consequent lack of training in
the fundamental duty of obedience. . . . The voice of command,
based upon the eternal distinction between right and wrong, addressed
to the conscience and the will, is seldom heard."
Many writers echo the opinion that the great defect of childhood
to-day is the lack of the spirit of acknowledgment of rightful author-
ity. The children of the submerged]tenth vie with the children of the nou-
veaux riches in ignoring law, both human and divine. The awe
which former generations of children felt in the presence of superior
wisdom, age, and experience has given place to the mental attitude
of the children who mocked the prophet EUsha. The general neglect
of home-training, combined with the absence of ethical instruction in
many schools, is having its inevitable result. The sanctions of the
moral law are not defied, they simply are not felt or even perceived.
Things are done if they are attractive; otherwise they are passed and
forgotten. The fading in the modern world of a vivid sense of the
imminence of future reward or punishment, the lessening at the same
time of restraint in home and school, and the constant consultation
of the pupil's tastes and choices, demanded by the extension of the
elective system downwards, and the kindergarten upwards — all this is
apparent in growing disrespect for law, in impatience of social control,
and in an egoistic type of morality. "The sacrificial ideal of life
is almost wholly out of view," writes a most thoughtful rehgious leader.
It deserves to be considered whether the kindergarten, with all its
beautiful tenderness, its care for the individual, its rightful exaltation of
play, may not often retain children too long, and so prevent their en-
PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS AND MORAL EDUCATION 13
trance into a discipline which exalts obligation, distinguishes sharply
between work and play, and produces a harder moral fiber. It may
well be considered whether the doctrine of interest, which has wrought
so beneficent changes in modern education, has not in some quarters
been totally misunderstood, and led to the idea that duty is binding
only so long as it is attractive. It may be considered whether the
elective system, which has done so much for the emancipation of the in-
dividual and development of diverse talents and callings, may not have
been so abused as to lead to the virtual inference that religious life is
optional, to be sought by those who can afford the time and efTort, rather
than essential to the very existence of a complete humanity. Certainly
many college men of to-day tend to the position that religious convic-
tion and emotion are very suitable for some temperaments, but not to be
expected by others. The idea of specialization seems to be carried in
some cases into the moral and religious realm, and it is held that,
while some men have the gift of religious possibility, or are called to
a sacrificial life, others are incapable of such ideals, and may well be
content with industrial or financial success. The consciousness of
defect in these lines is so widespread that the letters recently received
read like reports from some great confessional. I quote only two, one
from a college president, the other from the president of a theological
seminary. The president of one of our largest women's colleges writes:
"We sugar-coat all our pills of learning. Is there not a wholesome
tonic in the old-fashioned method of learning the disagreeable thing, of
being sure that two and two do make four and can by no possibility be
twisted into anything else ? The hard places of life must be faced sooner
or later, and though one wants to shield children and young people
as far as possible, yet it is no true education which does not give them
a certain hardness of intellectual and moral fiber, which will enable
them to face their own difficulties, and to accept even defeat always with
a strong purpose of turning it into victory. Is there not such a thing
as carrying the doctrine of vi^orking in the line of least resistance too
far, both in intellectual and moral matters?"
The president of one of our most influential theological seminaries
makes the same analysis in other words:
"If I may venture to hazard an opinion as to the chief moral weak-
ness in American education, I would say that it consists in emphasis
upon the idea that the way to educate children is to interest them. This
descends to amusement; and I have found many parents, both east and
west in this country, complain that their children were not trained to
habits of study. That is to say, the great principle, that education
14 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
has to do more with the will than with any other function of conscious-
ness, is neglected to an alarming extent. This must exert an adverse
influence upon the whole moral development of the child. It gives rise
not only to the thirst for amusement, but also to the inclination to
move in the line of least resistance, and to a sentimental view of life
as a whole. Sentimentalism is, perhaps, the chief danger in the atmos-
phere of contemporary religion."
When a general defect in the educational process of a nation thus rises
into the consciousness of intellectual leaders, and is frankly analyzed
and expressed, we are justified in recording real educational progress.
5. Closely connected with this defect is another — the lack of
thoroughness in thought and action. The superficiality in Bible
study, which has often prevailed in the past, is simply part of a general
contentment with the surface of things. Everywhere there is alert-
ness, eagerness, and movement; but there is a demand for swift results
which allows little time for the ripening of knowledge into wisdom.
It is the general conviction of college teachers that, while the freshmen
of to-day , know more than their fathers knew at the same age, they are
inferior to their fathers in logical strength, in power of concentration,
and in the faculty of sustained thought. "They all lack continuity
of thinking," writes one university professor. Out of such conditions
we can see how easily may arise the flippancy, irreverence, and
irresponsibility which are not unknown in any public or private school.
The haste to be wise may be as fatal as the haste to be rich.
But a consciousness of this deficiency, instead of being cause for
discouragement, must be regarded as the first step in its abolition. A
sign of genuine progress is that teachers and leaders are everywhere
declining to join in the demand for immediate results, and are seeking
a permanent deposit in the character and life of the pupil. •
II. If, then, our general survey shows decided progress in unprece-
dented activity, in increasing solidarity of educational forces, in a
growing demand for reality, in a growing consciousness of the lack of
imperativeness in motive and thoroughness in method, we are prepared
to examine certain specific agencies through which our generation is
seeking to supply its deficiencies and reahze its aspirations.
I. The year has been notable for its pubUcations dealing with the
principles and methods of religious education. These publications are
marked by a broader outlook and a more philosophical treatment than
any previously put forth. The merely homiletic has given place to the
genuinely educational, and the life of the spirit has at last appeared as
worthy of serious study as the purely cognitive or the logical process.
PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS AND MORAL EDUCATION 15
The real "helps" needed by our Sunday school teachers are not minia-
ture sermons, or moralizings, or illustrations; rather do they need under-
standing of the child-nature, knowledge of the principles of teaching, and
the elementary facts in religious psychology. The report of the last
meeting of the Religious Education Association, published in one
volume, constitutes in itself a contribution to this subject of permanent
value, remarkable for the unity of aim exhibited by men of various
churches, temperaments, schools of thought, and sections of the country.
The founding during the year of "The American Journal of Religious
Psychology and Education" is most significant. It is a sign of the
times that psychologists are at last convinced that the study of the
phenomena of conversion and religious development is not a realm
of mist and illusion, but is worthy of the best scientific method and the
most patient investigation that trained students can give. President G.
Stanley Hall's monumental work on "Adolescence" includes sections
dealing with the growth of the moral personality, and contains a wealth
of material which can never be neglected by any subsequent student.
Professor George A. Coe's work on "Education in Religion and
Morals" will probably become a text-book for a multitude of earnest
teachers. "Personal and Ideal Elements in Education," by President
Henry Churchill King, expresses ideals and convictions which are
rapidly becoming potent forces in the life of our most thoughtful
religious leaders. "Moral Education," by Edward Howard Griggs,
deals with the same problems from a wholly different standpoint.
"The Philosophy of Education," by Professor H. H. Home, sets forth
principles which have direct application in the field we are now discuss-
ing. The fact that these books should appear in the same year, and
that the methods they advocate are now being explained and enforced
in scores of periodicals and from a multitude of platforms and pulpits,
is a fact of far-reaching importance.
2. The discussion of the objects and methods of the Sunday school
has been incessant during the last twelve months. No subject can be
deemed more important. If the Sunday school is the church at study,
if there are by a conservative estimate more than thirteen million per-
sons enrolled in these schools, and if over eighty-five per cent of
our church members come from these schools, we have in this vast
undertaking a most potent force for the development of the national
character. The "searchings of heart" which mark all education to-
day are especially insistent in this field. On the whole, the situation is
distinctly encouraging. If most of us would agree with the university
professor who writes, "Neither the aim nor the method of the Sunday
i6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
school has been modified during the century of its existence to the extent
that the conditions warrant," yet, on the other hand, we must agree with
the Southern editor who affirms, "More has been done since Feb-
ruary, 1903, to put the Sunday school on an educational basis than
during the score of years immediately preceding." The meeting of the
Religious Education Association two years ago sent a thrill of hope and
expectation throughout the Sunday schools of America, while the meet-
ing of last year transmuted this hope into an organized endeavor.
It was felt by the most thoughtful leaders in the education of the young
that at last the scattered aspirations of hundreds of people were
being crystallized into action, that the emancipation, long hindered
by inveterate habit and timorous counsels and vested interests, was at
hand, and that, not by defiance and revolution, but by the quiet emergence
of better ideals and deeper understanding and a more catholic spirit,
the new day had dawned. From all sections of the country now come
reports of noteworthy, and in some cases remarkable, progress. The
Episcopal Church has, perhaps, in this work taken a position of leader-
ship. It has published during the year thirty-five text-books and
twelve manuals of instruction. At its General Convention, held at
Boston in the month of October, a new Sunday School Commission
was appointed, consisting of seven bishops, seven clergymen, and seven
laymen. At the same time a Federation of Sunday-school Associations
was formed, and the entire Convention felt itself on the verge of a
great forward movement. The work of the Sunday School Commission
of the Diocese of New York, as recorded in its quarterly Bulletin, is a
work of statesmanship and devotion, the results of which are being
studied throughout the country.
The Congregational churches, at their recent triennial conference
in Des Moines, put upon a working basis a Sunday School Commission
created three years ago for the purpose of developing rehgious educa-
tion throughout the denomination. The Southern Presbyterians have
revolutionized their work within two years. In the last year they have
placed several competent men in the field, whose business it is to help
the churches to better things in religious education. The same thing
may be said of the Southern Baptists, who have during the year
divided their territory into districts, and put experienced men in charge
of the work of Bible study and general religious training. The Meth-
odist Church, both in the North and in the South, is aroused on this
subject, and is scattering its literature far and wide, filled with sugges-
tion, stimulus, and outlines of method. The Unitarians have published
a series of graded lessons of a thoughtful and scholarly character.
PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS AND MORAL EDUCATION 17
Both religion and education are setting "the child in the midst,"
and joining hands in training him for a life of mental and moral effi-
ciency.
3. The young people's societies connected with the various religious
denominations are obviously in a transitional period. They are suffer-
ing at present from a conflict of ideals, but in this very conflict there is
encouragement. The older ideal laid emphasis chiefly on self-expression
in reUgious assemblies, and found its culminating success in vast con-
ventions where the boundless enthusiasm of youth overflowed in
dramatic and memorable scenes. It is stiU true that the great gather-
ings of the summer are potent forces, and the oral expression of
rehgious feeling has its rightful place. But the emphasis is now
being quietly transferred, in many societies, to the attainment rather
than the expression of experience, and the societies are becoming
groups of students. The Young People's Society of Christian En-
deavor, the Epworth League, the Baptist Young People's Union, the
Christian Union of United Brethren, the Young People's Union of the
United Presbyterian Church, and the Brotherhood of Andrew and
Philip, include altogether about five million members, and the ideals
of these societies are a shaping power in the whole nation. The
Baptist Young People's Union conducts four courses of study. The
studies are published in the form of a monthly magazine, which now
has a circulation of twenty-seven thousand copies. Ten thousand ex-
amination papers were sent in by students in these courses last year,
and through the stimulus of such study many young people have been
led to seek a college education. The Epworth League has courses
of Bible study in which the whole Bible is covered in three years.
About twenty-three thousand students are enrolled in these courses.
In the Junior League a simpler course is offered, with an enrollment
of over nine thousand students.
4. The moral and religious life of our colleges must be a matter of
concern to every American citizen. In the last thirty years our colleges
have swung away from the EngUsh ideals of their founders, and have
come under the influence of the German university. We have imported
from Germany more than laboratories and seminaries; we have
imported the university attitude toward students. We have discarded
the paternal idea, and have introduced a large measure of self-gov-
ernment. We have treated the students, not as boys, but as men,
and have cultivated responsibility, self-direction, election, not only of
studies, but of modes of hfe, and have allowed the religious effort
to proceed chiefly, not from the faculty, but from organizations within
i8 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
the student body. So far as this change means a diminished moral
leadership on the part of the teaching staff, as it often does, it is to be
deeply regretted. But so far as it means a more manly and efficient type
of religious character on the part of the students, the result of self-
control and deliberate choice, it is to be welcomed.
The Young Men's Christian Association continues to do a potent work
through its branches in the various colleges. That work, in spite of what
some may consider limitations, is constantly growing in wisdom and
power, and is to-day a source of gratification to all who understand it.
In general it may be said that the religious forces in college life
are, if not stronger better adjusted to the conditions about them than
ever before. Undoubtedly the devotional element in the average chapel
service does not appeal to the students as it once did. This is espe-
cially true in colleges for men only. Religion is interpreted in terms
of action and life rather than in terms of formal worship. It is trans-
lated into ethics rather than the practice of devotion. Thus, if the
student prayer meeting has waned, the interest of the student in mis-
sions, and philanthropy, and the service of his generation has steadily
increased. There is less interest in subjective states, less "testimony,"
but far deeper interest in doing good to one's fellow-men, far greater
admiration for a genuinely unselfish Hfe, and a decidedly higher standard
of student honor. The reHgion of college men is more healthy, stable,
and intelligent, and, if it is less emotional, is more pervasive than
twenty years ago. Whatever religion the college student has is more
fully co-ordinated with all his intellectual possessions. No longer kept
in a separate compartment, it influences all his thinking and doing.
5. The theological seminaries, if not so responsive to educational
movements as are the institutions which deal with younger pupils and
appeal to a larger constituency, are in some cases making earnest efforts
toward co-operation with the great educational forces of our time.
Some of them are entering into alliances, more or less formal, with
universities.
In the study of missions the best seminaries are seeking not simply
to give a swift sketch of events in missionary history, but an intensive
study of missions as social facts and powers, their relation to the de-
velopment of nations and races, and their proved place in the Kingdom
of God. A few seminaries are teaching the literary languages of the
larger mission fields, and offering courses in comparative religion. In
pedagogy, the attempt is made to present not only abstract principles of
teaching, but to introduce drill in methods of procedure, and to give
training by actual experience in the work.
PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS AND MORAL EDUCATION 19
The question of the supply of men for the ministry has engaged the
attention of all the seminaries. There is a general conviction, which
can hardly be either supported or refuted by an array of statistics,
that the ministerial calling is not securing its fair proportion, in respect
of numbers or ability, of the educated manhood of our time.
The student volunteer movement has given our missionary societies
more men than they can send forth, men who are glad to face priva-
tion and danger and death, because they have been made familiar
with this opportunity for service. If a fraction of the same effort were
devoted to the education of our young men in knowledge of the oppor-
tunities for influencing America through the functions exercised by the
Hebrew prophets, by the reformers of the sixteenth century, and by the
prophetic founders of New England, thousands of our ablest young
men would eagerly respond. We need for the service of the church
just such representative young men as Cecil Rhodes sought to gather
at Oxford by means of his great bequest — men of intellectual and moral
grasp, and power of leadership among their fellows. Our civilization
cannot endure without leaders of spiritual vision and prophetic power.
[ HOW CAN WE BRING THE INDIVIDUAL INTO
CONSCIOUS RELATION WITH GOD?
THE DIRECT INFLUENCE OF GOD UPON ONE'S LIFE
REV. WILLIAM FRASER McDOWELL, D.D., LL.D.
BISHOP OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Our definitions and doctrines should always emerge at the highest
levels, not at the lowest, nor even at the lower. Our conception of life
must be based upon the best specimens of life available for our study
or observation. What God may be in human life is to be determined
by His own thought of it, illustrated and exemplified by the most per-
fect cases on record. The question is neither speculative nor academic;
it is vital and immediate. Of this we all have knowledge. " That
which we have seen and heard declare we."
The visible center of our association is a literature. The invisible
center is a Person. The book is related to Him as to its source, as to
its substance, and as to its purpose. Without Him it would neither
have been, nor would it have been worth while. " The Bible is the
expression of an experience." It would not have been a Bible if it had
not been an experience. The literature is shot through with the sense
of God's direct relation to human life. Every figure of speech is used
to make that clear. But the literature is thus full of the sense of God's
direct presence because Hebrew life and early Christian life was thus
full of it. They wrote it all down thus because it had thus happened
to them. God is so supreme a figure in the book because he was so
large a figure in personal life. It is the expression of an experience of
God.
And this is the outstanding note of those Scriptures themselves. All
that the Bible means by such words as, " and the word of the Lord
came," " and God said," " and the Lord appeared"; all that we mean
at last by the noble term " revelation," when we are at its heart; and
all that we mean by such terms as incarnation and Immanuel are
woven inextricably into personal life. There was no doubt of God's
direct influence in the Old Testament days. In a thousand ways He
was shaping men, nations, and events. Individual lives, as Abraham's,
Jacob's, and Moses's, changed character and relations under His
direct touch. There was the immediate consciousness of God. He
pervaded life. He was immanent everywhere. He spoke immediately
THE INDIVIDUAL'S CONSCIOUS RELATION WITH GOD 21
to the soul of man. To the highest souls of the race, as Professor Seth
has put it, " God was an experience, not simply an object." Or as
another has said: " ' The Spirit ' has always been an expression for
some form of the divine immanence. The writer who used it has al-
ways represented God as immediately present in human life and the
world of common affairs, imparting skill to the workman's fingers,
wisdom to the statesman's judgment, or eloquence and cogency to the
prophet's plea." One might add that He was chiefly imparting life
and character, health and righteousness, goodness and true lioliness
to men and women.
" I never doubt for a moment the real presence of God " — we find
the late Burne- Jones, the artist, quoted as saying. " I never could de-
bate about it, any more than I could argue about beauty and the things
I most love," he added.
More than a quarter of a century ago I came to this city to study
theology. Almost the very first voice I heard was the voice of Phillips
Brooks. And no lesson did he teach either by his preaching or his Hfe
more clearly than the great lesson in these words: " He is the effectively
present deity. He is God continually in the midst of men and touching
their daily lives. He is the God of perennial and daily aspiration,
the Comforter to whom we look in the most pressing needs of comfort
which fill our common life. He is the God of continual contact with
mankind. The doctrine of the Holy Ghost is a continual protest
against every recurring tendency to separate God from the current
world." So indeed it always seemed while Brooks was here. Another
minister in this very city recently stated his dominant conviction to
be that of an " increasing awareness of the presence of God in the
world, in every part of the world, and in the life of man."
We shall hear this note more frequently and more clearly in our
time. We shall recall our generation to this majestic truth, " written
large across the pages of Scripture and in every land and time, that
God dwells in the heart of men." We shall tell our children that as
God was with our fathers to make them good and wise, so He is
with us.
In certain atmospheres and conditions it is easy both to believe and
understand the_ fact of God's direct influence upon the life of man.
It seems to have been easier when the world was younger, and the
race nearer its childhood. It is not hard at all to understand it as we
see it in the brief years of the incarnation. We see how men went
into the school of Christ, with Christ, and were influenced by Him in
all those splendid ways that make for the transformation of character.
22 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
He loved them; but many teachers have done that. He taught them
His truth; but many have done that. They watched and studied and
possibly tried to imitate Him; but many pupils have done that with
their teachers since the days of Socrates. But somehow He imparted
Himself to them, and did it in such fashion as to leave the impression
that this was what men might expect! The thing is a living pano-
rama going on there, going on here, going on everywhere, one per-
sonality directly influencing other personalities. Its pedagogical
and religious significance has not yet been fully worked out by us.
And we cannot work it out except in life. If one really wants to know
how and how far the life of Jesus is imitable, let him try it. Certainly,
modern Christendom is nowhere near the border of fanaticism yet in
its imitation of its Master, If any one really wants to know how
and how far God can and will exert direct influence upon one's life,
let him rationally, resolutely, and obediently submit himself to God.
He will find out.
The doctrine is most easily understood and believed in the presence
of the best types of life, ancient and modern. Abstractly, one feels
that God ought to be in direct touch with human life. In the large
view of life which history and biography afford, one easily feels that He
is and has been. We are not confined to those fascinating chapters
known as the history of mysticism for this conviction. The mystics
are not the only ones who have practised the presence of God. They
have been conscious of " God's most intimate presence in the soul."
They knew what St. Paul meant by the words: "In Him we live,
and move, and have our being." They knew also the significance of
the other words: God is " not far from every one of us." But this has
not been and is not the exclusive possession of one type of Christian.
Nothing is more remarkable than the immense variety in the men
who in all ages have become subject to Christ. God has touched
with power every kind of man. His influence is no pitiable force
limited to one type. It is the one royal fact, outstanding in human
history, giving sanctity and hope to every type of life.
The consideration of God's direct influence upon one's life leads
inevitably to a study of ^the place of the Holy Spirit in life.
It was not unnatural to desire that the direct influence of Jesus
might continue. But it was Jesus who said those strange words, still
not quite believed, that it was expedient for the others that he should
go away. His own withdrawal from their sight carried the pledge
of God's continued, enlarged, wider, and richer presence in life. There
was nothing that God was then doing or trying to do for men that He
THE INDIVIDUAL'S CONSCIOUS RELATION WITH GOD 23
was not pledged to continue. And He has kept His pledge to men
and the church. The Spirit is God exerting power in human life.
" Where the Spirit dwells and works, God dwells and works." Thus
He is immanent in men. Our tendency is rather to exaggerate the
achievements of the disciples during Jesus's earthly life. Manifestly
he expected us to do better than they. It is of the essence of infidelity
to deny His words. We may speak modestly and still believe that un-
der the Spirit we have done quite as well in comprehending truth, in
the conduct of life, and in Christian activity as they did. God has
been not less immediate, but more. He has been, not a guest of human
life, but a resident in human life. All those things that we would like
to have God do for us, in us, and with us, the Spirit — God exerting
power — does. It is one of the misfortunes of modern Christianity
that it imagines itself to be deprived of some advantages in these days
of the Spirit that it would have had in the days of the incarnation.
The cry " back to Christ " was not a sign of unmixed wisdom or of the
most rational and luminous faith.
The fanatic has sometimes misused the doctrine of the Spirit, and
driven men away from reality. The remedy for a fanatical use of
truth is a sane and rational use of truth. And if our generation shall
recover for men's lives t^e truth of the Spirit, as the truth of the divine
Fatherhood and the truth of Christ have largely been recovered, then
we shall deserve well of those who come after us.
Finally, how shall the sense of God's direct influence be begotten
in men? How can we make universal what is certainly frequent?
How can we make constant what is surely occasional? We easily be-
lieve in the direct influence of God at life's best moments and in the
presence of the best men. Here is the test of faith; that it shall believe
in the possibility of His influence everywhere and always. No other
unbelief is more subtle and deadly than this which doubts His direct
and immediate touch upon the life of man.
How does one man influence another? By living with him, by
teaching him his truth, by revealing his character, by setting before
him his plans and purposes, by giving him help and asking help of
him in return, by giving him love and asking his love in return, by
being strength and comfort to him in life's daily struggle — by all that
one life can be to another. No man can tell the story or put it down
in words. We cannot say it, try as we may. Even the Bible itself
does not fully say it. By every figure of speech and by every kind of
utterance, it tries,- but at last the secret of the Lord is only with them
that fear Him.
24 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
How can God's direct influence be increased and maintained? By
the practice of His presence, by fellowship with Him in prayer, by
companionship with Him in labor, by the study of His word and His
works, by the doing of His work; by dwelling in the secret of His
presence and being His servants in the world.
Once it was said of a group that others took knowledge of them
that they had been with Jesus and learned of Him. Do you see?
Need I go on?
Forty-four years ago, almost on this very date, Abraham Lincoln's
neighbors in Illinois gathered about him to say good by as he started
to take up his life's heroic task. Among other things, he said: "Trust-
ing in Him who can go with me and remain with you and be every-
where for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well." May
the Lord of hosts be with us as He was with our fathers!
THE BIBLE AS AN AID TO SELF-DISCOVERY
PRESIDENT HENRY CHURCHILL KING, D. D.
OBERLIN COLLEGE, OBERLIN, OHIO
Has the Bible any pre-eminent place in bringing the man of the
twentieth century to self-discovery? Especially, can it help him to
that highest self-knowledge that implies conscious relation with God?
If so, it must be because in pre-eminent degree it makes available a
wealth of complex experience, puts us in direct contact with the most
significant personal life, and challenges our every power even more
by the depth than by the breadth of its appeal.
It is worth noting, that the question has been already tested for us
in history. It was the Christianity of the Bible that awakened men
to real self-consciousness, made forever impossible the simple,
satisfied attitude of antiquity toward life and the world, and compelled
the bringing in of the modern romantic spirit. In the words of a great
philosopher, " Christianity had demolished this calm self-sufficingness
of the secular world " in which the ancient rested. " There began then
to be developed, for the first time, that personal consciousness which
thenceforward, with all its problems, — freedom of the will and pre-
destination, guilt and responsibihty, resurrection and immortahty, —
has given a totally different coloring to the whole background of man's
mental life." Paulsen makes " the longing for the transcendent " one
of the truths which " Christianity has engraven upon the hearts of men."
" Antiquity," he adds, " was satisfied with the earth; the modern era
has never been wholly free from the feeling that the given reality is
inadequate." Now, the Book whose influence has been thus sufficiently
powerful to draw the decisive line of demarkation between the ancient
and the modern worlds, and to awaken the modern man to that which
is most characteristic in his consciousness, can hardly fail of pre-emi-
nent power in bringing the individual to the discovery of himself.
No man, certainly, is likely to come to full self-knowledge inde-
pendently of those influences which have streamed forth from the
Bible. It suggests the laws of our life and it tests our powers in too
concrete and telhng a fashion to be wisely ignored.
The Bible is a most deeply and broadly human hook; and so fur-
nishes that appeal of complex experience so necessary to full self-
consciousness. It touches unerringly the whole gamut of the deeper
human emotions and aspirations, and embodies them in figures that
25
26 THE .\rMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
mankind will not wHlingly let die. The expereince of the race in-
creasingly confirms the testimony of Lotze, who says even of the Old
Testament, that " for the most faithful delineation of the ever-recur-
ring fundamental characteristics 0} human life, . . . the Hebrew
histories and hymns are imperishable models." And he adds, con-
cerning this miiversal human appeal of the Scripture: *' The treasures
of classic cultture are open to but few, but from that Eastern foimtain
cotmtless multitudes of men have for centuries gone on dra^ving en-
nobling consolation La misery, judicious doctrines of practical wisdom,
and warm enthusiasm for all that is exalted." A book with such breadth
of appeal cannot fail to stir to larger self-consciousness any man who
will face its phenomena with attention.
Moreover, it is of critical importance as an aid to self-discovery,
that the Bible should be in such rare degree a personal hook; for per-
sons are chiefly stirred by persons. And the Bible is so instinct with
life, that it is hardly possible to put the point of a needle into it any-
where without drawing blood. It brings us face to face with what
must be counted the most significant line of personaUties which his-
tory an}'where presents. -\nd it is the great glory of the historical
study of these later years that it enables us to see these prophetic men
as h\-ing personahties, facing precise problems. Nothing so stirs and
fructifies our own life, nothing so brings tis to glad sense of our owm
higher possibilities, as this appreciative and responsive sharing of the
\-isions of the higher man. Like children, we grow best by tr}dng to
measi:re up to things beyond our present capacity. And tins .=plendid
vision haunts as perpetually, until we have tr:ed to make it our owr
in deed as weU as in thought. We come to a new splf-consciousnes=.
For It is only true to say. on the one hand, even of the Old Testa-
ment ; that it is the one ^reai moral book of antiquity. It is net a mere
o Uection cf mora^ aphorisms, but shows the cevelop'ng moral sense
everywhere, in e\er}-thing. Character is leally the supieme interest
in this bock. Among all the ancient peoples in truth, only the Jews
haVw the modem sense of sin. and the Bible is, in this particular, the
only ancient book with a really mrdem tone. Compared with these
s.>Ler Jews, ewn the sifted Gretks are but placing children in their
sense of sin and character. This clear and coristantly deveiopijig
euhical tore matk^ ut the Bibie distil rlly irom all other ancient books.
And when one passes to the New Testament, ihis powerfiu ethical
impression is only increased. One may well say with Sabatier: 'What
other bcok like this can awaken dumb or sleeping consciences, reveal
the secret needs of the soul, sharpen the thr^-n of sin and pre;= its cruel
THE BIBLE AS AN AID TO SELF-DISCOVERY 27
point upon uS; tear away our delusions, humiliate our pride and dis-
turb our false stren'ty ? WTi it sudden ligntnmgs it shoots in to the
ab3sseF'. cf our hea'-tal Wha.*^ searchings of conscience are like those
which we make by this light •'" And a 1 this means that in sober fact we
must cone de to the Bible unrivaled power in brmging a man to moral
sel f-coi isciousncss .
Even the Old Testament is the one great religious book of antiquity.
For the actual life of the civihzation of this twentieth century, amongst
all the ancient world's rehgious books, only the Bible is of prime sig-
nificance. These Old Testament wTiters have been, as a matter of fact,
among all the ancient writers, the world's great spiritual and religious
seers.
And if this can be said even of the Old Testament, how much more
is it true of the New, with its vision of the supreme personality of
Christ. For self -disco very, this is most significant. Just so siirely as
religious interest is deeply laid in the very foundations of man's nature,
just so surely as reUgion is the supreme factor " in the organizing and
regxilating of our personal and collective Hfe," just so surely as it brings
us into the highest personal relation of which we are capable, just so
surely as reHgion is thus the deepest e.xperience into which a man may
enter, — even so surely must that Book, which is the transcendent
religious Book of the world, stir our whole natures as nothing else can
stir them. For the unity of our natures makes it impossible that this
highest appeal should be responded to -^dthout profound influence
upon all the rest of our Hfe. As does no other book, therefore, the
Bible brings to consciousness the whole man.
As the record of the progressive seeking of men after God, and of
the progressive revelation of God to men, moreover, the Bible offers
peculiar help in the development of our own highest consciousness;
for it enables us to relive, as it were, in our own personal experience
this whole religious life of the world, to apply thus to our o'oti deepest
life-problems a real historical method. And hardly any procedure
could be more helpful in bringing us to intelligent consciousness of our-
selves than this retracing of the most important steps in the working
out of character and faith in the world.
But the Bible is all this, finally, because it is, above all else, a hook
of honest testimony to experience. Its supreme value lies just here. For
the testimony of another is our chief road to enlargement of life.
Most of all, it is through such simple, honest witness that the New
Testament puts us face to face with the redeeming personaHty of Jesus
Christ. \Vhatever our theories about the Bible, it is not as compelUng
28 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
authority, but as simple, honest witness, that the New Testament
brings us emancipating power.
Now, this is the priceless and indispensable service of the Bible.
And it is the more indispensable to the modern man, the more deeply
he has entered into the modern spirit. For the deeper our moral con-
sciousness, the greater our sense of moral need. For the modern man
who has awakened to full moral consciousness, many an ancient way
of approach to God is decisively closed; and if he is to come into com-
munion with God at all, it must be by a manifestation of God great
enough to make certain both the hoHness and the forgiveness of God.
Now, it is just through this witness of the New Testament writers,
that we find in Christ for ourselves a fact so great, so transcendent,
that we come back to it again and again with calm assurance, to find
in its simple presence the indubitable conviction of the spiritual world,
of our own intended destiny, of God, and of His hohness and His love.
Christ does not merely tell us these things : He does much more — He
makes us able to beheve them. He — and no other as He — searches
us, humbles us, assures us, and exahs us at the same time. Only through
Him do we come with assurance into the great convictions, the great
hopes, and the great aspirations; and these measure us as does nothing
else. Only through Him do we come thus to real consciousness of our-
selves, in our sin and in our weakness, and yet in our majestic possi-
bilities as children of the living, loving God. Only through Him
are we brought into living communion with the living God.
To have sounded thus the depths of the Bible, is to have sounded,
at the same time, the depths of our own nature. Here indeed " deep
calleth unto deep."
THE CHURCH AS A FACTOR IN PERSONAL RELIGIOUS
DEVELOPMENT
RT. REV. WILLIAM LAWRENCE, D. D., S. T. D.
BISHOP OF MASSACHUSETTS, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Given a child in whom is developing a personal religious life through
the consciousness of God and the study of the Bible, what place has
the Church in filling out the character?
I shall mention six points of influence.
1. The discovery that there is a Church, a Congregation of the faith-
ful, gives practical reahty to the child's religious faith. We may lead
a child through prayer and experience; through a study of the heroes
of the faith in the Testaments, Old and New, to a consciousness of God;
but the kingdom of God is still far away; something more is needed.
Then on a Sunday morning, perhaps through a martial hymn, or the
presence of a great congregation of friends and neighbors, or the ser-
vice of baptism, there sweeps over the boy the conception of the Church
as a great company of men, women, and children, loyal to the cause of
Christ. The cross, the symbol of sacrifice ^and leadership, stands be-
fore him and them. Now faith becomes real, practical, and present;
the mystic consciousness of God melts into action; the ancient heroes
of the faith, Joshua, David, and Peter, take on the lineaments of the
men of the boy's own day and country. His whole conception of re-
ligion expands, character develops, and into its texture is woven the
strong and living fiber of social duty.
2. I said "the ancient heroes of the faith," and "the men of the boy's
own day and country." These emphasize only the beginnings of the
Church, and its present day. But the Christian Church has been a liv-
ing thing throughout the nineteen centuries. The historic Church looms
before the thought of the maturing boy; and he gains a conception of
the solidarity of the Church, the communion of the saints of all the ages.
Why is it that typical New Englanders like James Russell Lowell
were almost overwhelmed with the glory of the great cathedrals of Eu-
rope ? Partly, I believe, because through their religious traditions and
ecclesiastical horizon, limited to the Bible and New England, they had,
though unconsciously, been yearning for the inspiration of the historic
Church of the ages; and in Westminster, Canterbury, Chartres, or St.
Mark's, there flashed before them the glory of the ages of chivalry and
romance, the traditions of the monk and the cavalier. In their medi-
29
30 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
tations and worship there swept in upon them, at all events there has
swept in upon tens of thousands, a conception of the organic life of the
Church, satisfying and uplifting.
Such a revelation gradually opens itself to the boy maturing in the
faith. He knows the Bible heroes, he has known a few saints about
him in his home. Reading and thought open up the vistas of the past.
He discovers that the parish church wherein he worships has an ancient
lineage, vital and noble. Some story sends his thoughts back through
the days of the Pilgrims and the Reformation to the times of the mon-
astery, of chivalry, and the martyrs thrown to the lions. He lives in
them; his faith was their faith; his Christ, the Christ for whom they
died. There is pride in his Church, buoyancy in his religious life, a
firm confidence in the strength of his cause. Through the historic
Church, art, literature, and poetry have been saturated with the finest
sentiments of sage and seer. As, therefore, the boy reads, thinks, and
matures, his faith is shot through and through with the finest threads
of wisdom, beauty, and song. His character gains proportion, refine-
ment, and grace.
3. Thus far, however, the boy has not really had the confident as-
surance that he is as yet in and of the Church. His parents are in the
Church, the minister is, qlder people who go to the Lord's Supper
are; but where is he? Is he looking upon the Church from without,
or is he really a part of its very life ?
Here I may emphasize a point with which you may not all agree. I
believe that only by that ancient form and sacrament of Baptism in
earlier childhood can the child be incorporated into the Church and
made to reahze, as he grows older, that he is in fact a child of the Church.
I do not speak of baptism as the dedication of a child to Christ by
his parents. I speak of it as a sacrament whereby the child is received
and incorporated into the very organic life of the Church; whereby he
is declared a child of God, and by a service, founded upon a concep-
tion of the ideal, made an inheritor of the kingdom of Heaven. Hence-
forth he is not outside the Church. He is not within it by the courtesy
or sufferance of his elders; but he is within it by his own right, a living
member of the body; and upon him is thrown the responsibility, or
rather to him is given the privilege, of living as becomes a child of the
Church. Thus the constant appeal through boyhood is to his honor.
4. In the Church a boy finds a definite statement of faith — a creed.
I know that a definite creed is the last thing that some people feel
should be taught a child. He should, it is said, be led up to the faith
by influence, hero-worship, imitation, and by happy, pure associations.
THE CHURCH IN PERSONAL RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 31
Of course he should; nevertheless, he should, I believe, be given, by the
authority of his elders and of the Church, a definite statement of faith.
Authority is an essential element in child development. By authority,
as well as by example, he first learns of right, truth, and justice; later
he reasons out their relations and adjusts their proportions.
Our great mistake has come in the next step of development — a mis-
take which, I believe, has been at the bottom of much of the distrust of
the creeds and of authoritative teaching in childhood. The teacher or
parent, having given the child some definite foundation to build on, has
not trusted the boy, as he matures, to do the building, but has done the
building for him. Thus the youth have been driven to live and think
in the dogmatic houses of their elders, and religion and faith have be-
come unreal and insincere.
The form into which each boy builds his faith is as different as is the
character of each boy from his comrade. Who knows what that ex-
pression, "I believe in God the Father Almighty," means to a child?
Who knows what it means to the wisest theologian? Neither can
express himself adequately. Both will mature in their conception as
years pass. Children are deeper and wiser than we think. Give them
some definite spiritual facts to start from; that is, give them a real creed;
then guide, talk, and reason with them on to maturer faith. Do not
compel them, but trust and lead them.
Without the Church, how long would the teaching and preaching of
Christian truth endure?
Through the Church's teaching and preaching the child is led step
by step to a fuller conception of the faith, a higher ideal of life and a
larger sense of duty to others. I believe that much of our preaching to
children is unworthy of their consideration, and they know it. Chil-
dren's intelligence, discrimination, and intuition are worthy of respect.
The language should be simple and clear as was Christ's in the fields
of Galilee, but the thoughts must be deep. A child does not respect the
speaker who leaves him where he found him; he wants to be led up.
The habit and desire of his school life is promotion by some hard work.
The grouping of work and grading of lessons in Sunday school is, of
course, necessary and wise, but I believe that this modern popular clas-
sification of ages, so common in parish life and worship — infants, chil-
dren, young people, middle-aged people, old people (soon we may col-
lect those in their dotage) — has its grave perils. It is bringing into the
Church the evils of classified institutionalism, of orphan asylums, and
homes for old men. The family is the ideal; the common worship of
old and young; the sermon so clear and simple that from it the youth
32 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
catches some suggestions of inspiration, perhaps by a story, some fire of
enthusiasm; while the older people beside him are kindled with a deeper
love for God and a fuller sense of duty toward the youth.
6. Great as is the influence of worthy preaching to children, I am
not sure that the influence of worthy forms of worship is not greater,
for there is a strong appeal to that most potent of factors, the child's
imagination.
We children of the Reformation, in our reaction against the abuses
of teaching by the rites and ceremonies of the Church, do not begin to
realize the worth and power of these rites and ceremonies in kindling
the imagination of children and teaching them the truths of the Gospel.
What conception of the beauty of holiness, the heroes of the faith and
the joy of Christian discipleship can a child have who associates these
truths with the dreary basement of the church, a dusty floor, ungainly
benches, bad air, pictures of terrifying men, upon the bare white walls,
called heroes of faith, and the sound of a melodeon droning in quick
time weak tunes, unworthy of children's voices and intelligences? It
is no wonder that as they grow older they protest that they will find God,
or pleasure at all events, in the woods and fields where are sunlight and
beauty. The fact that noble faiths and lovely sainthood have been nur-
tured in bare, ugly churches is a testimony to the power of Christian
truth.
Now that the children of the Reformation have protested for some
four or five hundred years against the dangerous evils of some things
associated with the historic Church, is it not time to take up some
of the once discarded beauties ? Children will appreciate them if their
elders do not ; the restrained use of symbols and sacraments, the adop-
tion of architecture fitted to the system of worship within the Church.
A Puritan service in a Gothic church with a deep chancel is as unfitting
as an Anglican service in an honest, dignified meeting-house. Why not
make the best use of the suggestion of Christian truth in glass, orna-
ment, and mural painting; the glorious voice of organ, with uplifting an-
them and massive hymn; the response of minister and people; the Com-
mon Prayer, and even the Litany, for child nature has its minor as well
as its major key? Thus through action, words, and impression, the
child's imagination is kindled, as through preaching and teaching the
reason is roused, and thought and sentiment combine to create the fiber
of Christian character
Thus through the open door the youths go forth to meet life, to real-
ize the brotherhood of man, and in social relations to apply the spirit-
ual power caught within the Church.
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AS AN AID TO CONSCIOUS
RELATION WITH GOD
MR. L. WILBUR MESSER
GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE YOXJNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION, CHICAGO,
ILLINOIS
Many religious leaders believe that the Church of God, the Holy Cath-
olic Church, has entered upon the greatest spiritual awakening in its
history; a revival more widespread and permanent than the reforma-
tion of Luther, the awakening of Finney, or the evangeHsm of Moody;
a revival decreasingly characterized by the periodical revival meetings,
the emphasis on sudden emotional experience, dogmatic and fragmen-
tary Bible instruction, on well-intended but unorganized and unspecial-
ized missionary endeavor.
The great religious awakening which is marking the first decade of
the twentieth century, the new evangelism, will place not less but more
emphasis on the fundamental religious truths of Jesus and His apostles
now held in common by all true believers.
ReHgious education has shown that there is a common consciousness
of the continual presence of a supreme being, or God. " In the begin-
ning God — ." These are the primal words of the oldest book in use.
The immanence of God is experienced in every human soul. The uni-
versal fear of or devotion to an overruling spirit, or aggregation of
spirits, is significant. The idolatry, sacrifices, penances, and devotions
of peoples of all races and ages testify most strongly to their inherent
consciousness that, over and working upon the human life, are control-
ling influences that have their center outside of one's self. In the sober
moments of life every man instinctively appeals to or leans upon the
larger and stronger spirit whom he, perhaps vaguely, regards as the
original and final authority over the affairs of men.
Most men are conscious of a competition going on for the mastery
of Ufe or the struggle between the higher and lower tendencies. Many
consider this high nature, or set of tendencies, as the voice and presence
of God.
Religious education has shown that there is a consciousness of fall-
ing short of the expectation of God or of direct violation of His will.
This is consciousness of sin. A most patent experience in the life of
every man is his feehng of insufficiency or shortcoming. The great un-
rest of the human race finds its origin in the inbred feeling that it has
33
34 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
not attained or has blundered. The sense of forgiveness and of appro-
bation, when one turns from the lower to the higher tendencies within
him, is a real and personal experience, but no more so than the depress-
ing sense of guilt and overhanging penalty when one yields to the lower
tendencies at the sacrifice of the higher.
The commonly recognized distance between our real selves and our
ideals and the general sense of lack of complete harmony with the
" best," marks the failure that constitutes sin. The self-willed life that
breaks from a conscious harmony with the supreme will finds itself ill
at ease and in hazard, and usually recognizes, even if it will not admit,,
that the trouble lies essentially in this lack of harmony.
Religious education emphasizes the fact that there is a realization
that God is concerned about us. The fact that we are His handiwork
that He has created us, is a fundamental indication of His concern for
us. It is impossible for us to conceive of God as having no interest in
the highest type of His creation; nor can we believe that the divine law
of economy would permit the persistence of forms with which He is not
concerned.
An evidence of God's concern is found in our instinct of kinship with
Him, constantly urging us to seek a closer relation with Him. The hu-
man heart craves for a deeper and more sustaining love than any earthly
relationship can supply, and this craving is fairly interpreted as the at-
tractive power of His love for us. Dr. Frank Crane says: " God has
been, in every age and race, brooding over His human children, slowly
lifting them by the influence of His personality into a higher life." God
must certainly care for those whom He thus develops into His own image.
Religious education makes clear the fundamental truth that the cor-
rect view of life depends upon a recognition of Christ as the most potent
and concrete manifestation of God. We have the record of God's di-
rect recognition of Christ at the time of His baptism: " This is My be-
loved Son, in whom I am well pleased," and at the time of His trans-
figuration, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear
ye Him." Christ Himself said : " Believe me that I am in the Father,
and the Father in Me"; "He that seeth Me seeth the Father"; " I am
the Way, the Truth, and the Life : no man cometh unto the Father but
by Me."
Testimony written later by a contemporary of Christ affirms that " In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God." " In Him
was Hfe; and the life was the light of men." " And the Word was made
flesh and dwelt among us."
AN AID TO CONSCIOUS RELATION WITH GOD 35
True religious education makes emphatic the great truth that recon-
ciliation with God and a fully successful life depend upon individual
adoption of the principles of Jesus Christ as determining one's attitude,
development, and service. The principles of Jesus Christ find their per-
fect exempUfication in His own personality. To become a Christian is
to become a student of Christ's life, to pledge allegiance to Him and to
incorporate in the hfe the principles of His kingdom.
The principles of Christ are concisely stated in what He called the
two great commandments: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one
Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is
the first commandment ; and the second is like, namely, this : thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater
than these."
In the fulfillment of the fundamental principle of love to God and
love to men, we find Christ's development into a symmetrical perfec-
tion. "Jesus increased in wisdom, in stature, and in favor with God
and man."
One's adoption of these principles makes for the salvation of the
whole man, body, mind, and spirit, harmonized with the will of God
and prepared for service to one's fellows. The face of the Christian
behever is toward the goal " Of the measure of the stature of Christ."
" Citizenship in the Kingdom of God is not a set of negations; it does
not consists of long fasts, nor the absence of innocent pleasures; it is
not to worship a set of opinions. It is a well-rounded character; it is
health of the whole man; it is living in true fellowship with the spirit
of the manliest man that ever lived." One of the most mischievous fal-
lacies disproven by Christ is the attempt to separate the physical and
mental sides of our being from the immortal soul, for one cannot fully
love God or men with only part of his nature.
Christ's exemplification of His second great principle, "Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself," is found in the fulfillment of His mission
as he described it, " For even the Son of man came not to be minis-
tered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many."
Our adoption of this principle makes service to our fellows a dominant
characteristic of life. Conspicuous among the forms of Christ-inspired
service are mighty educational, philanthropic, and social betterment
movements, making for the broader estabhshment of " the kingdom of
God on earth."
The adoption of Christ's principles, by yielding to the Holy Spirit,
the pervading presence of God, makes us at one with Christ, and hence.
36 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
through His at-one-ment (atonement) gives us reconcihation with God,
for He and the Father are one.
These fundamental rehgious truths are finding a large acceptance
among men of various types, through the introduction and develop-
ment of the sociological method in reUgious education and of adjust-
ments in harmony with certain conclusions of religious psychology.
The recognition of the rehgious value of ethical, physical, educational,
and social agencies has made possible the development of a symmetri-
cal Christian life. The appreciation of the forces of environment, he-
redity and development, has made Christian teachers and workers less
dogmatic, more patient, sympathetic and tactful. The scientific study
of rehgious phenomena, the accommodation to temperamental varie-
ties, the apphcation of the divine law of development, the effort to meet
adolescent conditions and difl&culties, has resulted in an increase of
adaptability which has overcome the prejudices of large classes of men
who have failed to understand the fundamental truths and value of the
Christian religion.
For nearly twenty-five years it has been my privilege to be closely
associated with young men of widely different types and conditions,
with exceptional opportunities for ascertaining their rehgious convic-
tions and needs. I have found that the men of varied nationaUties and
occupations are largely and increasingly responsive to these principles
of Jesus. The benefit of the apphcation of these truths is manifest in
the great constructive power of the Christian home, the Christian school,
and the Christian church. It is also seen in the increasing respect for,
and use of, the Bible as a divine revelation of the nature and will of God,
and the proper relations of man both to his Creator and to his fellows.
The new evangehsm, the revival of the twentieth century, will lead
men to accept the Christian hfe by yielding to the Holy Spirit, through
faith in Christ and by the adoption of His principles. This evangel-
ism will lead men to build the Christian hfe by the constant and intel-
hgent appropriation of divine forces which make for righteousness.
This evangehsm will lead the disciples of Jesus to the larger ministry
of service.
The Rehgious Education Association, through one comprehensive
organization of leaders and workers of all organizations which seek the
extension of the kingdom of God, has become a great force in the pro-
motion of a type of rehgious education which includes all that is vital
in the evangelism of the past with added emphasis on truths and meth-
ods which will make religion a more pervasive power for personal and
social goodness.
HOW CAN WE DEVELOP IN THE INDIVIDUAL A
SOCIAL CONSCIENCE?
LITERATURE AS THE EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL FORCES
PROFESSOR ARTHUR S. HOYT, D.D.
AUBURN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, AUBURN, NEW YORK
Literature is the best interpretation of a people's life. The writ-
ers are the men who know their age best. They have not come from
a favored class, but from the people. They are ideahsts, and see
more truly than those who look on the form and fashion of life. They
are universal in their sympathies, and touch truths that make men feel
their oneness in nature, and need, and destiny. They feel with " men
the workers, men my brothers."
Social forces slowly gather. The truth is first whispered in the closet.
New ideals are cherished in the heart, they pass from lip to lip, long
before they crystallize into laws and institutions of society. The
men of imagination and feeling understand these deep and silent cur-
rents of life. They interpret the age to itself. They give body to the
unnoticed and even intangible motions of common life.
Our American literature has been the mirror of our life. The
greater freedom of thought here, a more widespread education, and
so the greater influence of books, the closer identification of our liter-
ary men with popular interests, all unite to make our literature thor-
oughly expressive of American life.
What have been the distinctive social forces of American life ? Love
of home and family, belief in the dignity of labor, sympathy for the
weak and oppressed, and faith in the Democratic ideal. These truths
may be called the very substance of our literature. The sacredness of
the family has been the mark of our life from the beginning, and that
sacredness has never been seriously questioned by our writers. They
have been tenacious of our domestic ideals. Put Gibbon beside Mot-
ley, or Parkman, or Fiske, and we feel the purity of American thought,
compared even with that of the mother country. Few of our writers
deal with morbid sexuality. Not one has thought to consider marriage
an open question, in the spirit of the " Woman Who Did," or " The
South African Farm." Contrast the delicacy of Hawthorne's treat-
ment of sin, with the bald realism of a great artist Hke Tolstoy; or the
hot, passionate scenes of temptation in " Lady Rose's Daughter,"
37
38 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
with the cleansing humor over the weakness of American society in
" The People of the Whirlpool." What a glory rests upon home,
its simple joys and common duties, in the pages of poet and novelist
alike !
We find the spirit of brotherhood in our literature as it has been in
our life. It is no lordly pleasure-house for the few, while the multi-
tudes that toil and suffer roam the distant plains like droves of swine.
And our elder poets are the voices of freedom, calling for the breaking
of whatever fetter lies upon body or soul. The constant theme is the
worth of the common man, stripped of all the accidents of life. From
the spirit of humanity and brotherhood have come the sense of social
and political unity, the growth of national consciousness, and the
conviction of purpose and mission in the national life.
The dominant element of our national life has been religious. Chris-
tian faith has given to home its simplicity and purity, to labor its honor,
to the humblest man his worth, and to the national life its divine sig-
nificance. And these social forces have been properly interpreted
and put in shining form, because our writers have been men of faith.
A genuinely religious spirit pervades our literature. Our literary
men may depart from the stern and austere worship of the fathers,
but they have never lost " the tender and gracious fear which made
the glory of Puritan faith, and gave visible force to Puritan character."
They may declare their independence of human creeds, but never their
independence of God. We have no city of " Dreadful Night," where
" All the oracles are dumb or cheat,
Because they have no secret to express."
Behind the darkest shadow standeth God, " keeping watch above
His own."
It is a cause for profound gratitude that the men and women who
often search an age to the depth of its consciousness are so often con-
scious of the presence of God, and see His kingdom growing through
the lives and institutions of men
We have not measured the power of literature in training the social
conscience when we have thought of it simply as the expression of life.
It is prophetic as well as expressive.
Who has put the social passion into so many young English hearts
to-day ? Why are men working for the poor, identifying themselves with
the toilers, living in the midst of sodden and hopeless masses, giving life
to save the heart of the empire ? It is because Christ's ideal of brother-
hood and service has been made beautiful and glorious in verse and
LITERATURE AS EXPRESSING SOCIAL FORCES 39
story. John Ruskin made art speak the message of social service, and
Arthur Toynbee made culture minister to the lowly. It is wonderfully
significant that on each birthday of Robert Browning a company of
boys and girls from the most crowded and wretched part of South
London lay their tribute of flowers on his grave in Westminster Abbey.
American literature has been no less faithful in giving the social
message of democracy. The social conscience was educated until
property in human lives seemed a sin against God. That conscience
was trained by the fearless and prophetic teachers of our literature, by
Whittier's voices of freedom, and Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin,
and the Biglow Papers of Lowell.
I have discussed the subject in the light of history rather than in
that of present social forces and their expression in the literature of
the day. Judgments may thus be saner and lessons more unmistak-
able. Yet the truth has a present interest that is urgent and must be
heard.
We must feel the transitional and critical condition of our age.
Immeasurable social forces have been loosed among us. Yet, through
the confusion of these contending forces, we must believe, as Christian
men, holding to the fact of the present kingdom of God, and His living
Spirit, that a new age is coming, of purer faith and truer social right-
eousness. And we may see something of its gleaming ideals before
us.
How shall these social forces, working in the lives of so many, be
interpreted and expressed so that the mind and conscience of the Church
shall be devoted to these high ends? Where shall we look for our in-
spired prophets and leaders? Shall not our literary men, as in the
past, share in this sacred ministry?
Thank God, some men are speaking. Here and there a novelist
has the social passion. There are sweet voices for a simple life. Here
and there a poet has the nobler vision, an essayist puts in living words
the truth of society.
We have a multitude of writers; we have infinite skill, and taste,
and form. But the coal from the altar is often wanting. Only that
deep sense of the sacredness of life, of God in His world, the breath
of the Divine spirit, can make our literature cleansing and life-giving.
The writer is brother of the teacher and the preacher in sustaining
the higher forces of society. The novelist may be the best teacher.
He certainly is reaching the greatest number. The poet may be the
best preacher. He certainly sounds deepest into the hearts of tlie
chosen ones. Together we must work for the kingdom of God.
SCIENCE AS A TEACHER OF MORALITY
PROFESSOR JOHN M. COULTER, Ph.D.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
The subject does not imply that science is professedly a teacher
of morality, but that incidentally it makes for righteousness. It would
be comparatively simple to select from its contributions to knowledge
many that have strongly enforced the necessity of moraHty; or to point
out that its conception of the inevitable consequences of acts has shown
that results are a matter of course rather than of chance. To my
mind, however, valuable as these contributions may be, they are but
superficial indications of an attitude, of mind which represents the chief
contribution of science to morality. To give a clear conception of the
relation of this attitude of mind to moraHty is difficult, for it is some-
what intangible, and to a certain extent prophetic; but to me it seems
to be the most important phase of the subject.
It should be understood further that the subject does not imply that
science can replace religion as a teacher of morality; but that in so far
as it contributes anything to morality it reinforces religion. "Science"
is a term of convenience rather than of exactness, and hence I must
state at once that in this paper it means what is called "the scientific
spirit," which is a certain attitude of mind. Before attempting to state
its relations to morality, I wish to indicate what it is by noting some of
its characteristics.
I. It is a spirit of inquiry. In our experience we encounter a vast
body of estabhshed belief in reference to all important subjects.
Nothing seems more evident than that this body of belief belongs to
two categories: (i) The priceless results of generations of experience;
and (2) heirloom rubbish. Towards this whole body of established be-
lief the scientific attitude is one of unprejudiced inquiry. It is not the
spirit of iconoclasm, as some would believe, but an examination of the
foundations of belief. It must be evident that this spirit is directly op-
posed to intolerance, and that it can find no common ground with those
who confidently, and perhaps somewhat violently, affirm that the
present organization of society is as good as it can be; or that the past
has discovered all that is best in education; or that the mission of re-
ligion is to conserve the past rather than to grow into the future.
This is not the spirit of unrest, of discomfort, but the evidence of a
mind whose every avenue is open to the approach of truth from
40
SCIENCE AS A TEACHER OF MORALITY 41
every direction. I hasten to say that this beneficent result of scientific
training does not come to all those who cultivate it, any more than is
the Christlike character developed in all those who profess Christianity.
I regret to say that even some who bear great names in science have
been as dogmatic as the most rampant theologian. But the dogmatic
scientist and theologian are not to be taken as examples of the "peace-
able fruits of righteousness," for the general ameliorating influence of
rehgion and of science is none the less apparent. It is not the speech of
the conspicuous few that is leavening the lump of human thought, but
the quiet work of thousands of teachers. Scorn and ridicule of things
that others hold in respect is not the attitude of science. Its function
is to search for truth and to present it supported by such a convincing
body of evidence that error will disappear without being attacked. It
is the expulsive power of new knowledge that the teacher of science
must rely upon to unsettle ignorant opinion.
2. // demands that there shall be no hiatus between an effect and its
claimed cause, and that the cause clahned shall be adequate. It is in the
laboratory that one first really appreciates how many factors must be
taken into the count in considering any result, and what an element
of uncertainty an unknown factor introduces. In the very simplest cases,
where we have approximated certainty in the manipulation of factors
to produce results, there is still lurking an element of chance, which
simply means an unknown, and hence uncontrolled, factor. Even when
the factors are well in hand, and we can combine them with reason-
able certainty that the result will appear, we may be entirely wrong
in our conclusion as to what in the combination has produced the
result. For example, we have been changing the forms of certain
plants at will, by exposing them to varying combinations of certain
substances. It was perhaps natural to conclude that the chemical
structure of these substances is responsible for the result, and our pre-
scription was narrowed to certain substances. Now, however, it is
discovered that the results are not due to the chemical nature of the
substances, but to a particular physical condition that is developed by
their combination, a condition that may be developed by the combi-
nation of other substances as well, or even by things that are not
substances; so that our prescription is much enlarged.
There is a broad application here. For example, in education we
are in danger of slavery to subjects. Having observed that certain
ones may be used to produce certain results, we prescribe them as
essential to the process, without taking into account the possibihty that
other subjects may produce similar results. In religion we are in
42 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
danger of formulating some specific line of conduct as essential to the
result, and of condemning those who do not adhere to it. That there
may be many lines of approach to a given result, if that result be a
general condition, is a hard lesson for mankind to learn.
If it is so difficult to get at the real factors of a simple result in the
laboratory, and still more difficult to interpret the significance of factors
when found, in what condition must we be in reference to the im-
mensely more difficult and subtle problems which confront us in social
organization, government, education, and religion !
The habit of considering only one factor, when perhaps scores are
involved, indicates a very primitive and untrained condition of mind.
It is fortunate when the leaders of opinion have gotten hold of one real
factor. They may overdo it, and work damage by insisting upon
some special form of action on account of it, but so far as it goes it
is the truth. It is more apt to be the case, however, that the factor
claimed holds no relation whatsoever to the result, and then the
noxious weeds of demagogism and charlatanism flourish. It is to such
blindness that scientific training is slowly bringing a little glimmer of
light, and when the world one day opens its eyes, and it will be well
for it to open them very gradually, the old things will have passed
away.
3. // keeps one close to the facts. There seems to be abroad a notion
that one may start with a single well-attested fact, and by some logical
machinery construct an elaborate system and reach an authentic con-
clusion; much as the world has imagined that Cuvier could do if a
single bone were furnished him. The result is bad, even though the
fact may have an unclouded title. But it too often happens that
great superstructures have been reared upon a fact that is claimed
rather than demonstrated. Facts are like stepping-stones; so long as
one can get a reasonably close series of them he can make some
progress in a given direction, but when he steps beyond them he
flounders. As one travels away from a fact, its significance in any con-
clusion becomes'more and more attenuated, until presently the vanish-
ing point is reached, like the rays of light from a candle. A fact is
really only influential in its own immediate vicinity; but the whole
structure of many a system lies in the region beyond the vanishing
point. Such "vain imaginings" are delightfully seductive to many
people, whose life and conduct are even shaped by them. I have been
amazed at the large development of this phase of emotional insanity,
commonly masquerading under the name of "subtle thinking."
Science teaches that it is dangerous to stray away very far from
SCIENCE AS A TEACHER OF MOLALITY 43
the facts; and that the farther one strays away, the more dangerous it
becomes, and almost inevitably leads to self-deception.
The attitude of mind which training in science tends to cultivate has
been illustrated sufficiently for our purpose. The moral aspects of it
seem to me to be quite evident even in this partial analysis. It is open
to the truth; it seeks for trustworthy evidence in reference to it; if
necessary, it strives to strip off the husks of human opinion that it may
get at the kernel; and when found it accepts it with ardor.
It may be well, however, to carry the subject forward to a more
definite stage. Without pretending any knowledge of the philosophy of
morality, and still more ignorant of its terminology, I wish to indicate
the attitude of the scientific mind towards those questions that affect
personal and social conduct. The problem is to develop an effective
man and an effective social order. From the standpoint of science,
the various moral codes that have been formulated do not have any
suggestion of commands. They are attempted statements of truth,
which, therefore, must be tested. To take an extreme illustration, the
set of moral principles contained in the Ten Commandments or in the
Sermon on the Mount are not authoritative because they are com-
manded, but because they are true. Science would never raise the
question whether the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount
are "binding" upon this nation or upon that, or upon this generation or
upon some other; but simply whether they contain principles essential
to a well-ordered individual or society; if so, they are true and always
apply everywhere, just as does what we call the "law of gravitation."
Newton has the reputation of having announced the law of gravita-
tion, which science prefers to call a mode of operation rather than a
"law"; but I presume that no one would say that this law is binding
upon us because Newton announced it. The world, like the individual,
grows in knowledge; and the childhood of the race received as com-
mands what maturity recognizes as statements of eternal truth, infi-
nitely more binding than any commands could be. There is no resent-
ing truth or no quibbling about it; and obedience is imperative. Moral
truth, therefore, has the eternal and binding qualities of the truths of
nature, which we call laws. I count this scientific attitude towards
morality to be a distinct contribution towards its enforcement. I
recognize freely that when this compelling power of knowledge is rein-
forced by the attraction of a noble emotion there is a tremendous gain,
but such a reinforcement is the peculiar function of the Christian re-
ligion.
As a further illustration, showing how science reinforces religion as
44 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
a teacher of morality, it may not be out of place to outline a scientific
approach to the fundamentals of morality and even of Christianity, an
approach that has proved satisfactory to many students trained in science.
If a plant is to develop to the fullest possible vigor, it must estab-
lish effective relationships with its surroundings, otherwise it will be a
failure. A green leaf, to be strong and useful, must establish relations
with the air and the sunshine. If a root seeks to estabHsh the same
relations, it will be a failure, but relations with the soil will make it
strong and useful. This very well-known biological law furnishes a
clue to the problem of a strong and effective human life. It must
establish effective relationships with its necessary environment.
The first step is to discover what are the dominating factors in the
environment of a human life. At least two conspicuous factors are one's
self and one's fellow-men. The problem, then, is to discover the most
effective adjustment to these factors, an adjustment that means growth
and the highest expression of the human powers; in other words, mak-
ing the most of one's self.
The next step is to discover illustrations of the most effective lives,
and at this point the perspective of the investigator comes into play.
Compelled to consider the things that really make life worth the living,
the things that are to give a quiet mind in the retrospect, it is rare
that the most desirable lives are not chosen. Pressing the search for
the completed exempHfication of the most effective life, the lines all
focus in the person of Jesus Christ, and this quite apart from any
peculiar claim made for him by Christians. I have found absolute
unanimity in the judgment that no life, in all that makes for strength
and effectiveness, has approached that of Jesus Christ. It seems to be
a human life at the limit of its capacity.
The next step in the investigation is to discover the solution offered
by such a life to the problem of effective adjustment of one's self
and to one's fellow-men. No questions of authenticity enter into such
an investigation; for even if such a person never existed, the character is
clearly drawn, and it stands as a definite conception of the finest pos-
sible man.
The investigator recognizes that he himself is a bundle of contra-
dictory impulses, all of which cannot dominate, and some of which
must. The grosser ones he recognizes offhand as dangerous, and
they are eliminated from the investigation. But among the finer ones,
to choose that one to dominate which will make the most effective life
is not so easy. An investigation of the personal character of Christ
reveals the fact that He selected unselfishness to dominate, a selection
SCIENCE AS A TEACHER OF MORALITY 45
that squarely holds in check the strongest natural impulses. The
difficulty of this adjustment is unquestionable; no more difficult one
could be suggested; but it means the difference between the sun pulling
everything to itself, and the sun radiating light and energy in every
direction. Testing the conclusion by the lives that have actually
touched his own, the investigator finds abundant confirmation, for tlie
effective lives are essentially radiating centers of energy.
The problem of one's effective adjustment to his fellow-men is even
more perplexing; but the model studied says clearly that the answer is
service, not service that seeks a return, but service prompted by love.
And again, personal observation says that this is true.
Perhaps you are not aware of the strong appeal that love as a
stimulus to right conduct makes to the scientific mind. The scientific
man is accustomed to stimuH and their responses, and he is fully alive
to the fact that all that is finest in human conduct is a response to the
stimulus of love. Therefore, in a religion whose basic principle is love,
and whose God is the personification of infinite love, he recognizes an
influence on personal character and on social order that must regener-
ate both when fully applied.
Thus the effective adjustments are found, and the life that seeks to
develop by selecting unselfishness and service as dominant principles is
well started on its way towards religion.
I wish to remind you again that this is no fancy sketch of what
might occur and probably never has occurred, but a very brief state-
ment of the successive steps that have often been taken by men whose
training demands an approach of this kind or none at all.
It is not clear to me that you will regard such results as of very large
value, especially if you are not familiar with the scientific attitude of
mind and the steps it must take to reach a conclusion that brings con-
viction and self-application. And yet it means to me that the scientific
mind is open to moral truth, is incapable of being diverted from it by
prejudice or second-hand opinion, and is compelled to accept and apply
it when recognized. It is an attitude of mind peculiarly intolerant of
sham or of cant, and likely to brush aside unessentials that do not
seem such to all; but this comes not only from its training, but is also
one of the things it has learned to admire in the life of Jesus Christ.
I am afraid that it is little interested in theologies, for their data,
methods, and conclusions are to it hke a foreign tongue; but I make
bold to say that it is immensely interested in moraHty and religion,
and none appeals to it so strongly as does the morality and religion
.of Jesus Christ.
46 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
It is impossible to overestimate the effect of the scientific spirit,
which dominates modern scholarship, upon that general attitude of
mind that is making the world at large more sane and better able to
repress unbalanced thinking. From this point of view, it would seem
as though scholarship had at last entered upon its serious mission of
curbing the irrelevant emotions of mankind, and of introducing that
intellectual domination which must analyze problems to their ultimate
factors and construct general systems of belief that are rational and
effective.
THE ETHICAL EDUCATION OF PUBLIC OPINION
PRESIDENT HENRY S. PRITCHETT, Ph.D., LL.D.
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
In a sense, this question includes all other questions of education,
for in our day public opinion has come to be the supreme intellectual
and moral force of civilization. In a state of religious and civil free-
dom such as we enjoy in America, public opinion is nothing other
than the gradually forming, gradually advancing conscience of the na-
tion and of the race.
It is worth noting that we give to this universal conscience some-
times one name, sometimes another. When men speak to-day of
Christianity, they sometimes mean nothing other than this race con-
science, for in its wider sense Christianity to-day is no longer a matter
of church or of dogma; it is an expression of the spiritual life of a race,
as determined by the gradually growing conscience of humanity. The
question is. How shall this public opinion, this race conscience, af-
fected by a thousand influences of our complex modern life, — how
shall this conscience of a nation be educated so that it may grow steadily
toward strong and true ethical standards? Men have been trying to
answer this question for two thousand years; but in the last quarter
of a century they have been trying to answer it under conditions so
vastly different from those of the centuries before, that a very brief
reference to them seems necessary for any consideration whatsoever
of the question itself. The essential difference between those con-
ditions is this: we men of to-day — and again I speak to college men —
have entered into a state of intellectual and religious freedom which
the world never before knew. Up to the middle of the last century
men's thinking and men's consciences, were, in great measure, limited
by considerations of authority and of organization. There are still
men, and men of the highest intelligence, who are wilHng to submit
their thinking and their conscience to the limits of rehgious authority
or of religious dogma, and are happy in it. With such men the scholar
who strives toward a larger religious life can have no quarrel. But
for the great body of college men, for the great mass of scholars, the
day of authority in religious thinking has gone by. We stand in a
world of complete intellectual and religious freedom, in which each
man acknowledges no higher authority than the standard of his own
47
48 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
conscience and his own thinking present to him. And yet, nothing is
more clear than the fact that this freedom does not necessarily mean
peace or contentment, or a higher spiritual life. In America, not only
in intellectual and religious matters, but in political matters as well,
we are constantly tempted to regard freedom as an end, not a means;
to consider it happiness in itself, not the road to happiness; to think
of it as a release from responsibility, not to realize that freedom brings
greater responsibihty; to enter into it carelessly and lightly as if our
service were at an end, not reverently and in the knowledge that it is
the beginning of a higher, a larger, a deeper service.
Shall our children of God ever learn that freedom brings service?
God led the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage, into freedom. But, brethren, that freedom was not
Sinai, nor yet the promised land; it was the wilderness. Let us
rejoice in the complete freedom of our generation and of our coun-
try, for the way of Freedom is God's way; but let us not think we
are at Sinai or in the promised land when we are only in the wilder-
ness. Men have no more adjusted themselves to the new conditions
of this freedom than they have adjusted themselves to the new condi-
tions of transportation, and to the enormous industrial changes
which have come through it. We are out of the house of bondage,
both as men and as organizations, — political, civil, religious, — but
we have only entered into the wilderness of political, intellectual,
and religious freedom.
Taking into account these conditions, thanking God for the freedom
into which the world has come, but looking with clear eyes at the fact
that this freedom has brought us only into the wilderness, the question
we ask ourselves is. What is, then, to be done, and, more particularly,
what is there for college men to do, to educate the conscience of men
to right ethical standards?
So far as I can see my way to answer this question, the answer is
this:
The education of the conscience of mankind is not a matter of ethics,
but of religion; not a matter of moral distinctions and of rules of life,
but a matter of spiritual development in a new environment; not a mat-
ter of high ethical appreciation, but a matter of the divine life in the
individual human soul. If men are to be led through the wilderness
of freedom into the promised land of a higher religious conscience and
a deeper service, it will come only through religious leadership, — but
one capable of dealing with the conditions of the day and of the age, —
the age of reason and of freedom. If there is any one service above
THE ETHICAL EDUCATION OF PUBLIC OPINION 49
all others which the college men of to-day may render to their race,
it lies in the training of leaders who have in their hearts the simple
religion of Jesus Christ without the theology of the Church which calls
itself by His name. A rehgious leadership, intelligent, scholarly, de-
voted, spiritual, — but divorced from theology, — is the greatest agency
which college men can bring to the education of public opinion. Men
will no longer accept authority outside of their own consciences, but
leadership plays as great a part as it ever did; and religious leader-
ship, just as political leadership, must take hold, not only of the mind,
but of the emotional nature, that deep endowment of our being in which
lies, for the most part, our loves and our hates, our hopes and our fears,
our aspirations and our ideals. A man to-day, whether in the Church
or out of it, must have the quality of leadership if he is to influence
public opinion.
I am aware, that in making such an answer, we only push back
the difficulty one step. The question still confronts us, how to pre-
pare men for religious leadership; and this is as difficult a problem
to answer as the original question, but it has the advantage of at least
greater definiteness. I may do nothing more than make a few state-
ments concerning it.
And, first, I will say that any man who has to do with a great stu-
dent body, under whose eyes pass year by year the great stream of
energy and devotion and power contained in the lives of young men,
must feel keenly the tremendous preponderance of material influences
which bear upon those men in the education of to-day. Somehow,
in the rush of their lives, in the sharp competition to get a living, in the
national readiness of Americans for a trial of strength with one an-
other, the spiritual forces of the student Hfe seem to have less chance
at a man then they did twenty-five years ago. Even when one admits
the narrowness of the rehgious teaching, the barrenness of the tradi-
tions which went as truths, the constant tendency for mistaking the
letter for the spirit which characterized religious instruction in the last
generation, he nevertheless reahzes that through all this ran a deeper
significance which did turn the thoughts of men continually away from
the daily treadmill of that which is material. No man can have at
heart the welfare of his country, and of his race, without a deep desire
for a stronger spiritual influence in the lives of those armies of students,
for something adequate to deal with the ever-growing tide of material-
ism which sweeps over them.
On the other hand, the more experience one has with this question,
and the closer contact he gains with the student life, the less sure he is
50 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
as to the specific means to bring about this end; the more he comes
to distrust specifics in education in any direction, rehgious education
included. Of this much only he feels certain, that he who seeks to
deal with the men of our colleges, — men who are intellectually alert,
in the main earnest, ambitious, — he who seeks to deal with these
men in religious matters must do so upon a plane of intellectual sin-
cerity far above that which satisfied the men of a generation ago. No
hiding behind authority, no quibble about words, no sanctity of in-
spired page, will avail. The unconscious traditions of religious life,
the store of memorized verses of the Scripture, the inbred respect
for the preacher and his profession with which you and I grew up,
do not exist for them. We scarcely realize how great these forces
were in our lives until we feel their absence in this man of a new
generation of freedom. He looks, clear-eyed and unblinkingly, at the
questions of religious observance and of religious life, and he will face
your theological statement in exactly the same mental attitude in
which he deals with a formula in chemistry. And yet, deep down
in his breast the same spiritual possibilities lie, and when you touch
him on the great fundamental questions of our human life, its mean-
ing, its outcome, its greater possibilities, you find him responsive, and
thoughtful, and eager.
What agency can be invoked to stir this latent critical spirit of free-
dom into the earnestness of religious leadership ? In seeking to answer
such a question, one turns naturally to the Christian Church. Is the
Church, in its various denominational efforts, able to furnish a re-
ligious leadership which shall be efficient in the education of the Pub-
lic Conscience?
This is a serious question for the Church and for those out of its
formal relationship. The outlook to-day is not the most hopeful.
The Church suffers under certain great disadvantages. It is an or-
ganization, and shows the inertia of all human organizations. Or-
ganizations, for this reason, never lead; men lead. To-day the Church
is trying to hold on with one hand to a traditional theology and with
the other to reach out to the fast changing forces of science and the new
industrial life. Any organization is, in one sense, curiously unfitted to
undertake the promotion and the care of religion. For what is religion,
after all, but the divine life in the individual human soul, a divine flower
growing up in its natural soil from the ever-present energy of the Father
himself? It was of the very essence of Christ's leadership that it
lent itself to the inspiration of the individual religious life, so that each
man led his own life with God. Inevitably, no organization' can'^deal
THE ETHICAL EDUCATION OF PUBLIC OPINION 51
with this problem as such; this is one reason why the better the organ-
ization, the more difficult the production of leaders of this type, and the
greater the tendency for the organization and those in it to be diverted
to the advancement of the organization or to the science of religion,
which is theology, and which has the same relation to religion which
botany has to the flowers, or which astronomy has to the stars, or
which chemistry has to the chemical reactions. Now, in the freedom of
our twentieth-century wilderness there is a demand, not for leaders who
can perfect the organization, or who can defend the science of religion,
but for leaders who may show men how to grow in their own hearts
the flowers of true religion; how to see in their own skies the stars of
everlasting hope and truth; how to keep alive in their own hearts the
chemistry of love and devotion and unselfishness, and commune with
Him who is the Father of all.
That a great undercurrent of religious influence and of religious
thought is beginning to stir in human aflfairs which has no connection
with Church organization, is evident to every man. Through the
world there is striving a deep, sincere reaching after God. In many
ways this spirit is crude, indefinite, and sometimes wavering. Will
there come out of this movement religious leaders able to influence
public opinion, and to lead the consciences of men to the thought of their
individual religious life? The political, not less than the religious,
future of the nation hangs upon such leadership, for right government
of the people, for the people, and by the people will come, not out of
political organization or out of drastic municipal regulations: it will
come, if it come at all, out of the growth of a true religious life in the
hearts of all men.
To plan for such a leadership, and to bring forth such leaders, is
the noblest work to which college men may give themselves, and in
such leadership lies the most powerful influence to affect at once the
conscience of the individual, and of the nation, and of the race. Give
us from the college life religious leaders able to deal with to-day's prob-
lems and the ethical and religious education of public opinion will
follow.
^ ^ 1 DISCUSSION
PROFESSOR HENRY S. NASH, D. D.
EPISCOPAL THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
I assume, first, that the pith of the question we are handling con-
cerns the younger generation. The training of the young- is our su-
preme problem. If we can solve that problem well, the question of
the older generation will take care of itself. Second, that effective
moral teaching cannot be abstract. It must be vivid and concrete.
The ideal method of moral teaching would be one that took great con-
ceptions and visualized them, embodying them in high imagination.
With this much taken for granted, it follows of itself that we must
implant the social conscience in the young by keeping our great con-
ceptions close to the ground. Not very long ago, all our teaching was
bookish; now, it aims at concreteness. Thus, in teaching geology to
the children of Boston, the good teacher starts with the immediate lo-
cality. So in the " training of the social conscience." It is only our
ingrained individualism that prevents our seeing that the substantive
and the adjective in this phrase were joined together by God, and that
man cannot put them asunder. If we take the young in the natural
order of their thought, our task is easy. Boys run as naturally to groups,
and teams, and gangs as they run to a swimming-pool in the dog-days.
So, the moral education of the young should work in this natural and
instinctive direction. It should find children at home and teach them
there.
But morality is enfeebled if it be detached from high imagination.
The morality of the young, therefore, must be steeped in imagination,
in noble and compelling forms. Now, no form of thought is both
noble and compelling unless it takes a great conception and endues it
with a more or less visible body. And here it is that the laws of teaching,
as we are beginning to apply them, find in the ripe results of the criti-
cal study of the Bible the best means of training the social conscience.
All the more is this true if we can teach the Bible as we have seen it
grow, without spending our time in explaining or explaining away
the old conceptions of the Bible.
The aim is to train the conscience so that it shall be a social conscience,
so that every thought of duty shall have a social side. How can that
be better done, or so well as by teaching the Scriptures in an historical
52
DISCUSSION 53
way? So studied and taught, they tell us how a nation, starting on
the foundations of primitive tribaUsm, grows up into the supreme con-
ception,— the kingdom of God. The prophets come before us as the
piercing, penetrating critics of the social and political life of their na-
tion. They clear the ground in thought, as they cleared the ground in
history, for the supreme Person — the Christ — who took the national
hope of His people, and by perfect self-sacrifice and self-assertion
purified it so that it became the hope of the race.
Thus, Bible-teaching, allied to the natural and instinctive lines of
growth in childhood and youth, may breed up in the young a kind of
conscience wherein the individual and the social elements are indis-
solubly blended. From the Book of Deuteronomy to the First Epistle
of John, by way of the Person of Christ, is there any other way for
conscience to travel ?
One of the topics yesterday evening was. The Bible as an Aid to
Self -discovery. The thought of to-night which supplements it is that
he who knows his Bible knows that there is but one place where he
can hope to have a clear knowledge of himself. That place is deep
and widening human fellowship. There alone can one know the
God and Father of Jesus Christ. There alone, through the knowledge
of the one true God, can one attain to a clear and saving knowledge
of one's self.
PROFESSOR WILLIAM E. B. DU BOIS, Ph. D.
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY, ATLANTA, GEORGIA
It is impossible for the individual to reach the larger social con-
science by sheer expansion, by a benevolent endeavor to be interested
in all men. This leads inevitably to a tenuous filmy consciousness,
a loss of grip on the realities of human beings — on the concrete man.
It becomes easily a theoretical rather than a practical humanitarianism,
and has often been illustrated in the world's history by the wavering
and doubting of the philanthropic mind.
We can only be interested in men by knowing them — knowing
them directly, thoroughly, intimately; and this knowing leads ever to
the greatest of human discoveries ,^he recognization of one's self in
the image of one's neighbor; the sudden, startling revelation, " This
is another Me, that thinks as I think, feels as I feel, suffers even as
I suffer." This is the beginning, and the only true beginning, of the
social conscience.
But it is the beginning, and not the end. If followed up with real
interest and determination, it must lead, next, to the discovery and
54 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
realization of the stranger, to something at first subtle and fleeting, then
shadowing into strength and reality, that tells us, Here in this my neigh-
bor stand things I do not know, experiences I have never felt, depths
whose darkness is beyond /^me, and heights hidden by the clouds; or,
perhaps, rather, differences in ways of thinking, and dreaming, and
feeling which I guess at rather than know; strange twistings of soul
that curve between the grotesque and the awful.
But to them that persevere, to them that say, " I do not just com-
prehend why a working-man loves to get drunk, or why a housemaid
buys curious hats, or why a negro basks lazily in the sun, these, and
yet greater things, I do not understand, and yet I will, in God's truth,
seek to know all this and more," — to such hearts and minds will come
in time the glimpse of a larger answer, the faint yet growing compre-
hension of human likenesses that both transcend and explain the dif-
ferences, and that reveal, in the realization, the essential humanity of all
men, — that strange kernel of life, which, hidden though it be, and in
body, thought, and surrounding far removed from us, is yet for us and
in us, the greatest fact in the world.
Once this is recognized, then comes the only practical synthesis in
this world of self-sacrifice and self -development : the recognition of
myself as one of a world of selves, not as all, but as one; not as nothing,
but as one.
Hither the social conscience must come, without wavering, with-
out compromise. In a world of men, even of differing and different
men, we cannot, on account of cowardice, treat any of these men as less
than men; we cannot slink back of Darwinism, to discover excuses,
or whiten our lies by laying them on the Lord. If you have aspira-
tions above the dirt, why may not your coachman? If you, in the
choking narrowness, stretch groping arms for air, why may not the
hod-carrier be dissatisfied too? If you count yourselves as something
more than your money, why may not I ?
To induce, then, in men a consciousness of the humanity of all men,
of the sacred unity in all the diversity, is not merely to lay down a
pious postulate, but it is the active and animate heart-to-heart knowl-
edge of your neighbors, high and low, black and white, employer and
employed; it means a firm planting of human ideals; the training of
children to be through their doing, and not simply to do through their
being; the setting of our faces like flint against the modern heresy
that money makes the man, and a revere.it listening, not simply to the
first line but to the last line of Emerson's quatrain:
DISCUSSION 55
'There is no great, no small,
To the Soul that maketh all;
Where it cometh, all things are—
And it Cometh everywhere."
REV. SAMUEL M. CROTHERS, D.D.
MINISTER OF THE FIRST PARISH, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Let me emphasize what President Pritchett has said about the
difficulty which besets the Church in this matter of moral leadership.
The Church is a great historical institution. It has a life running
through centuries. It draws inspiration from a glorious past. One
of the great articles of the historic creed is, " I beHeve in the Holy Cath-
olic Church." This means more than a belief in the present-day
Church. It is the expression of loyalty to a great historic movement.
I believe not only in what good men are doing to-day, but in what they
have done through all these ages. " Like a mighty army moves the
Church of God." It is a military maxim that "an army must be dis-
tributed widely in order to subsist; it must unite in order to fight." So
the Church must seek for its suppHes over a wide territory. It must
be ever seeking the best in literature, in science, in art, in daily ex-
perience.
Then all these things must be united, and all its varied force be
brought to bear upon the besetting sin of the day. What is the beset-
ting sin of society ? There have been times when it was superstition,
slavery, or intemperance. To-day the gravest danger is the greed
for gain. Our American communities are ill governed because men
who will not lie in a personal transaction will allow a lie for their
own party to go unrebuked. Men who will not themselves steal will
tamely submit to corporate stealing. There needs to be a revivial of
simple honesty and civic courage.
If the Church is to do its part in this reformation, it must first purify
itself. And then the Church must be united. It must present a solid
front.
HOW CAN WE QUICKEN IN THE INDIVIDUAL A SENSE
OF NATIONAL AND UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD?
The Sacredness of Citizenship
PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. TUCKER, D. D, LL. D.
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE
We must be sure that we advance our ideals as the facts for which
they stand are filled with power. Every powerful thing must be capa-
ble of being invested with sacredness, else it is an evil thing. It is the
chief business of righteousness to follow after power and after powerful
men. Whenever this work is ignored or evaded, all minor tasks are
futile. The account with righteousness is not kept by attention to
incidentals. As some one has recently said, " There is something
grander than benevolence, more august than charity: it is justice."
Citizenship, as it advances to its new and enlarging functions, must
become more and more sacred in the eyes of men, if it is to fulfill these
functions. It must concern itself, according to our judgment of its
business, with " the weightier matters of the law." We must learn
to be impatient of all easy and spectacular, if not questionable, sub-
stitutes for citizenship in downright earnest.
So much lies in our subject without further saying. But how shall
we compass so great an end, which is nothing less than to raise the
moral estimate of citizenship? How shall we who beheve in the value
of education contribute to this end? How shall we come out of the
academic into the practical, and say the things we have to say, and do
the things we have to do, effectively? So far as the masses are con-
cerned, we must work, I think, in and through the concrete. Citizen-
ship is a matter of principles and ideals; but it is no abstraction. It
is a matter of details, which, in their ceaseless and monotonous re-
turn, teach " line upon line and precept upon precept." Citizens are
made by doing the things for which, at any given time, citizenship
stands. There is no other way of making the ordinary citizen. Prin-
ciples are established, standards are set, ideals are made clear and
abiding through persistent, or as in some cases through aroused and
impassioned, action. A campaign like that of District Attorney Jerome
on the East Side of New York is first educational, secondarily political.
We can educate somewhat through the schools; but, for the most part,
we must be ready to take the field, and deal with men who do not think
much in our way, but who are capable of thinking earnestly.
56
NATIONAL AND UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD 57
But the immediate question before us, and as it seems to me the
most serious poHtical question before the country, is, not how shall we
educate, in the ordinary sense, those whom we call the masses? but
how shall we raise in those already educated the moral estimate oj citi-
zenship? The greatest political danger of our time does not come di-
rectly from ignorance, but from the use made of ignorance by the in-
telligence of organized power, with the tacit consent of the intelligence
of culture. Ignorance may be the condition; it is not the inciting cause
of political corruption. That cause lies within the region of intelligent
dishonesty. It is our bounden duty, for every reason, to educate the
ignorant; but it is a shame that we are obliged to educate them for
the sake of protecting ourselves from our own trained and often edu-
cated leaders, who have become adepts in corruption.
It is as true to-day as when Carlyle said it, " It is the knowing ones
who rule." WTiat do our " knowing ones " think about citizenship?
What is the moral estimate which they put upon it ? What is the moral
estimate which we, as a consenting, if not an active, political part of
the knowing and ruling ones, put upon it? Let us test very briefly
this moral sense of citizenship as it comes within our observation or
experience.
Citizenship, we shall agree, requires the faithful use of political
rights. Rights, once established, instantly become duties; otherwise
we must speak of them as unoccupied rights. An unoccupied political
right always represents so much indifferentism, — moral as well as
physical absenteeism. The percentage of unused rights has become
a calculable factor in political manipulation. It can be pretty definitely
located in any given community, for it usually follows the lines of intell-
igence. We familiarly say that the quahty of the vote in New England,
not its size, depends upon the weather. No man can faithfully use
his political rights without a good deal of inconvenience, personal ef-
fort, and sometimes personal courage. The result is an increasing
disuse of political rights among those who are unwilling to pay the
price of the right. It is for this reason that a great many question
the extension of political rights, as through woman suffrage. Will the
rights, if established, be occupied ? Citizenship is cheapened by un-
used, as it is demoralized by misused', privileges.
Citizenship, we shall emphatically agree, requires that its po-
litical purity be kept inviolate. Bribery is to suffrage what forgery
is to business, or treason to the service. But bribery is a recog-
nized, not exactly authorized, but recognized, method of transacting
poUtical business. Neither party claims to be free from it. The gen-
58 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
eral facts in regard to political bribery are part of the public knowledge,
though it may be difEcult to individualize them. Aside from the dull-
ness of the party conscience at this point, the most disheartening feature
of this whole business has been the failure to put the emphasis upon
the wrong in the fit place. ^ We have held in public contempt the men
who take bribes, instead of holding under public condemnation the
men who give bribes. Not until the exposure in Missouri were we
ready to view this matter in the right proportion. Of course there is
a vast difference in degree between the selling of one's vote, and the
sale of one's official power or influence as a legislator or judge; still,
it is the men or the corporations who are taking the initiative in this
kind of corruption with whom we are chiefly concerned. We cannot
expend our wrath or our contempt upon their victims and allow them
to maintain their respectability. Certainly, as regards the purchase
of votes it is the purchaser who is the greater sinner in the light of the
sacredness of citizenship. It is he who conceives the mischief, and
works the temptation, and secures the result. Upon him should fall
the heavier condemnation. We are just awakening to the enormity
of the offense of bribery on its active as well as on its receptive side.
Let us learn to discriminate in respect to bribery in the purchase
of votes among the more ignorant voters, so that the penalty shall fall
where it belongs, at a second remove upon ignorance, at first hand upon
intelligence.
Citizenship, we shall further agree, requires the subordination of
private interests to the public good. I would not affirm that men are
more selfish or less patriotic than formerly, it is entirely evident
that there are greater opportunities for, and greater incentives to, self-
aggrandizement at the public cost than formerly. Organization has
become a powerful influence in stimulating private interests. It re-
tires personal responsibility; it awakens, in its place, ambition and
pride in large adventures; it develops great rivalries; it creates powers
which must be recognized, and which may demand to be fostered by
the state. Unconsciously, it may be, the private citizen finds himself
carried on, step by step, by the way of organized power, to a position
where he seeks to utilize the government, or where he is forced to an-
tagonize it. The process is evident, and we are becoming familiar
with the result. Hence the growing fear, in the public mind, of or-
ganized power, as such, — a fear which is beginning to include organ-
ized labor as well as organized capital. It requires no prophetic vision
to foresee the nature of the next political struggle, — if there is to be a
struggle rather than a campaign, — that it must be between the organ-
NATIONAL AND UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD 59
ized and the unorganized power of the country; in which event organ-
ized capital and organized labor will be found, of necessity, upon the
same side. Who can doubt, in the present circumstance, the duty of
all enlightened and patriotic citizenship of trying to avert the pos-
sibility of such a struggle. Now, if ever, is the time to consider, and
to consider diligently, the public good, if for no other reason than that
lasting security may be given to all private interests which are compati-
ble with the public good.
And yet, again, I am sure that you will agree with me as I say that
citizenship cannot exist without sentiment. The state is not a cor-
poration. It has a soul. It has its essential greatness in its humanity.
Citizenship amongst us must conform to the political aims which we
profess and to the political ideals which we cherish. It is the ruling
passion of a people which fixes its destiny. That ancient and forma-
tive passion for liberty, that respect for man as man, that sense of jus-
tice which was not satisfied till it had set the bondman free, that hos-
pitality which has- held the doors of the nation open to all who aspire
after freedom, that tolerance which has kept the realm of opinion as
free as the realm of action, that almost impracticable sentiment which
has been struggling, and is struggling still, to realize the equality of
opportunity, — all these are our inheritances of the spirit, the endow-
ment of our citizenship. These are the things for which we stand.
Realized politically, they make a democracy. Realized spiritually,
they make a brotherhood. Let us realize them through citizenship.
Let us keep the path of the democracy of toil and struggle open to the
last material rewards to which it is entitled. Let us keep the path for
the democracy of the mind open through every grade of education to
the last training of the university. Let us keep the path for the democ-
I'acy of the soul open to every spiritual privilege, even if in so doing we
must needs reconstruct our churches. Nothing less than these things
can satisfy the deep and abiding sentiment of citizenship.
Judged by the tests which I have recalled, we cannot say that citi-
zenship, as it exists within our knowledge, is clothed with those sanc-
tities which can alone give it saving and redeeming power. And yet
I firmly believe that there has begun a revival of the political conscience
of the nation which is to make its moral power commensurate with its
intelligence. We are certainly growing more sensitive to political wrong-
doing, if in the nation, if in the state, even in the city, we are growing
steadier and more determined in movements for reform. We are not
afraid to invoke the law of the land for all legitimate ends which are
revealed by public necessities. We are growing less narrow, less
6o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
captious, less partisan in our criticism of public men, and more dis-
criminating in our support of those whom we believe deserve well of
the republic. Approval of the right, and of right men, is just as much
a sign of moral advance as criticism of the wrong and of wrong men.
And we are also coming to believe, as a nation, that greatness is
not incompatible with righteousness, but rather that if greatness be
ordered by God, righteousness must come forth out of it in the divine
sequence. If God be in His world at the present time, this must be
so, ^OT all things which belong to the nations are taking on the dimen-
sions of greatness. The spirit of nationality, of which I spoke at the
beginning, of which we are beginning to be really conscious, is, I be-
lieve, related to the spirit of God. In His name it is summoning na-
tion after nation to show itself at its best. There is a call of God to
nations, as to men, to be great. It is not wise for a nation, any more
than it is for a man, when that call comes, " to hide amongst the stuff."
May God in His infinite grace deliver this nation from the weakness
and the cowardice of mere material prosperity, into that " liberty where-
with He makes His people free."
The Mission of Christianity to the World
PRESIDENT CHARLES CUTHBERT HALL, D. D.
UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK CITY
To bring the individual into conscious relation with God, and to
develop in him a social conscience, are not the only aims of Religious
Education. There is a third aim, which includes the others, and ad-
vances beyond them. The question before us, at this time is, How
can we Quicken in the Individual a Sense of National and Universal
Brotherhood ? This is but another way of asking. How can we pro-
mote in man a Godlike attitude and spirit toward the world? It is
the world-view of a man, and the world-view of a people, that makes
man and people small or great. We shall not preserve the religious
spirit of our nation by external efforts of instruction alone. These will
fail unless within the hearts of our youth is conserved and cultivated
that Godlike attitude and spirit toward the world which is the sense of
National and Universal Brotherhood. God is love; and he that loveth
not knoweth not God. Religion is not only consciousness of God, not
only a social conscience toward our neighbor; it is a Godlike attitude,
a Godlike temper of the mind toward the whole world of men. How
shall we quicken this among the millions of our younger citizens ?
The wise counselor, the President of Dartmouth College, has.
NATIONAL AND UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD 6i
in part, answered this question by his address on the Sacredness
of Citizenship. There is nothing new in the proposal to connect
rehgion with citizenship. It is a thought that has haunted the
world from time immemorial. The East is full of it. The civ-
ilization of the West has arisen out of the successive attempts of
men and nations to promote, to modify, or to banish this thought.
It has taken on the form of ecclesiastical autocracy, dominating the
state and the members of society with the rod of spiritual despotism.
It has appeared in the modified form of a constitutional union of Church
and State, with a religious establishment and a prescribed liturgy em-
anating from the throne as the head of the Church. It has been re-
pudiated altogether in secularist reactions, wherein citizens, goaded to
the denial of God by the tyranny of clericalism, have proved the im-
mortality of the idea of religious education by their futile efforts to
extirpate it from the public mind. To-day, in the United States, where
ecclesiastical autocracy is impossible, where constitutional union of
Church and State is equally impossible, where no provocation to secu-
larist reaction arises, because no interference with religious liberty is
attempted, an opportunity exists, perhaps unparalleled in the history
of the world, to show the normal relation of religion to citizenship in
national life. That opportunity is an educational one. It is found
wherever children and youth are found. It consists in whatever deep-
ens the impressionable nature of the young, a spirit of reverence, a
sense of national brotherhood, a belief in the sacredness of public
duty. Already this spirit is widespread; promoted, thank God! by
the contagion of good example on the part of some in the highest sta-
tions of government in the land. It will be strange if the American
genius for surmounting difficulties, joined with the American concep-
tion of rational patriotism, be not adequate ultimately to deal with that
highest civic problem of religious education, in which citizens of all
faiths have equal interest, the cultivation, in institutions maintained
by the public funds, of that sacred attitude of mind toward citizenship
which springs from the training of the religious instincts, and only
from that.
But the correct training of the religious instincts leads to results
wider than patriotism. There is a brotherhood that reaches beyond
national lines; a citizenship of the world, in the view of which there is
neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but only
manhood, with its rights and its wrongs. To qualify for that larger citi-
zenship in the world; to quickeo in the individual the sense of univer-
sal brotherhood, the Godlike attitude toward other races and other
62 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
faiths; the respect for man as man, — is the supreme end of Religious
Education. It is possible that all may not be in sympathy with this
aim. Some may consider it visionary, a matter of phrases rather
than an affair of reality, deeming that it is impossible to look on races
unlike our own with those feelings of homogeneity and affection that
are associated with the idea of brotherhood. Some may call it a revo-
lutionary aim, tending to subvert the providential order of superior
and inferior races; a leveling doctrine, at variance with the Anglo-
Saxon tradition. But for those who have discounted artificial dis-
tinctions born of time and caste and unequal opportunity, who have
construed the Christian religion in the terms of the cosmopolitanism of
Jesus Christ, nothing is more sure than that the cultivation of the sense
of universal brotherhood is in accord with the spirit of Christ, with the
best educational principles, with a rational philosophy, and with the
tendencies that shall advance the peace of the world. It is a tremen-
dous thought, that with the growth of the democratic spirit in the twen-
tieth century, which is the growth of the right valuation of personality,
individual personality and national personality, there may be at hand
a rediscovery of the mission of Christianity to the world, which would
mean a return to the cosmopolitanism of Jesus Christ. How simple,
and how majestic in its simplicity, is Christ's attitude and spirit toward
the world. His mind is disburdened of all questions of sectarianism
and race prejudice. He has incarnated Himself in the life of the race,
and every interest of the race is dear to Him. He is unhampered
by autocratic tradition; He is incapable of the luSt of conquest.
His heart beats in unison with every upward impulse of hu-
manity, and bows in sympathy over each futile effort. The griefs
of the world weigh upon Him. He weeps for its sins. He loves the
world with an eternal passion, as of an only-begotten from a Father.
He gives His life for the world in atoning sacrifice with joy that despises
the shame of the cross, saying: " If I be lifted up, I will draw all men
unto myself." What simplicity of intention! what cosmopolitanism
of spirit! Far away from it has moved the Christian civilization of
the West, caught in the strenuous complications of its historical devel-
opment. Every force that is alien to the cosmopolitanism of Christ
has wrought upon it, to obscure from the eyes of the world, the real
mission of Christianity. Ecclesiastical despotism has, more than once,
claimed a monopoly of knowledge, in order that, through fear, born
of ignorance, it might promote submission to authority. Sectarian
strife has dismembered the Church, witli fury that, at times, has rivaled
the ferocity of pagan wars. The spirit of feudalism, which is the sub-
NATIONAL AND UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD 63
ordination of the many to the will of the few, has dominated Chris-
tian states and shaped the foreign policies of Christian empires. The
slavery of men has been sanctioned by Christian opinion. Race hatreds,
deep and implacable as those of Islam, have flourished in the soil of
Christendom and wafted their influence to the Far East. The pro-
vincialism of proud nations, glorying in the name of Christian, has
nourished morbid beliefs in destiny, which have made them destroyers,
and, to the Oriental mind, have identified Christianity and armed im-
perialism as synonymous terms.
Not with rash and shallow condemnation does one speak of these
historic aspects which have arisen in the evolution of the Western world.
However regrettable they may appear from the standpoint of an ideal-
ist, doubtless they have been part of the travail of creation, without
which mighty products of good could not have been born. Doubtless
they shall be overruled, both in their direct and indirect influences of
evil, through the great providence of God, who makes the wrath and
the error and the vain pride of man to praise Him. And we must not
forget that with these regrettable things have come also many things of
priceless value, that are of the essence of our religion and in harmony
with the mind of Christ ; truths that have been purged of dross in the
alembic of controversy; institutions, domestic, social, political, sacra-
mental, that have survived, as if immortal; moral ideas that must re-
main, though heaven and earth should pass away. It is true that the
West dare not point to its historical development as an example of
ideal Christian evolution. But it is also true that the West, ascending
through strife, and sin, and sorrow to its present greatness, bears wit-
ness to the imperishable essence of the Revelation of Christ.
To all who observe the passage of events, and who reflect on what
they observe, the present state of the world speaks of impending changes,
the meaning and extent of which are not to be predicted. The acute
crisis in the Far East suggests immeasurable possibilities in the re-
distribution of controlling interests. Beyond this obvious portent of
change are other signs which, though obscured for the moment by the
clouds of war, strike the practised eye, and shall in their succession
appear before the public mind. The familiarity of intercourse be-
tween the most remote part of the world is the more impressive because
it excites comment no longer. We go to the Far East to-day with less
difficulty of preparation and less sense of remoteness than our fathers
who went from Boston to the valley of the Mississippi. We expect
the presence of Orientals in our seats of learning; at BerHn, at Stras-
burg, at Oxford, at Harvard, at Princeton. Nor are there lacking,
64 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
in the East, seats of learning rivaling our own, where science and lit-
erature and politics of the West are taught. Academic interchanges
within the East are habitual. India and China are dispatching the
flower of their youth to Japan to study European biology and phi-
losophy in the imperial universities of Kyoto and Tokyo.
Numerous local movements of spiritual reform are taking place in
Hindu, Mohammedan, and Buddhist circles; movements that appear
to be sporadic, but reveal, on closer scrutiny, one common term, the
assimilation of portions of the Christian truth; and, like the returning
of a Nova Scotian tide from its long ebb, there is rolling in upon the
educated life of the Orient the pressure of mysterious impulses making
for a new social order; the flood of fresh suggestion, bespeaking hope
and energy to cover the wreckage of long passivity and philosophical
despair; the mysterious appreciation of Christ and of the esoteric as-
pects of Christianity.
As one ponders the present state of the world, noting these phenom-
ena of the East, with others, ominous, yet not less evident, darkening the
sky of northern Europe, and as one reflects that God's plan moves on-
ward, whatever else be stayed, the question presses. Is there shortly to
be a new interpretation of the mission of Christianity to the world?
After the long ages of the historical evolution of the West, during which
ecclesiastical despotism and sectarian strife, and the spirit of feudalism,
and race-hatred, and the provincial pride of destiny have drawn the
thick veil of Western civilization between the face of Christ and the
waiting East, is there to be a new Epiphany, a fresh manifestation of
Christ to the Gentiles through some nation that has come out of the
blind evolutionary struggle into the simplicity that is in Christ?
If so, can we be that nation ? There are conditions present in our
life that suggest the possibiHty of our election for this benign service.
In the heart of our people is the spirit of civil liberty. That spirit has
so incarnated itself in our life that it determines, more or less, our
world-view. We judge of the blessedness or misery of nations by the
measure of their freedom and their self-sufiiciency. Therefore, what-
ever may exist in the thinking of individuals, there exists not, in the
thinking of the American people, the desire to enslave, the lust to con-
quer. If, lately, we have appeared to the East as a military power,
it was because honest men deemed, whether rightly or wrongly, that
this was a step toward the ultimate liberty of enslaved peoples, not
a barrier against it, and I believe that this desirable view of our motive
prevails throughout the East up to this time.
Nor is the American view of religious liberty less pronounced. Our
NATIONAL AND UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD 65
most holy traditions are the voluntary principle and the unfettered
right of conscience. To scorn the faith of any man is to surrender
what our fathers won and held through suffering.
But, if it be God's pleasure to use this nation, so wondrously seg-
regated from the comphcations of European pohtics, to make to the
bewildered world a new demonstration of the essential spirit of Chris-
tianity, there must come a great deepening in the nation's heart of the
sense of universal brotherhood, which is (to use the venerated language
of our authorized version) " good will toward men." Peace on earth
comes not, abides not, returns not, save where there there is good will
toward men; a deep sohcitude for the world's good, a growing tradi-
tion of world-wide love in a nation's heart, supplanting that unchas-
tened selfishness which is the first tendency of a prosperous and pro-
gressive people.
From that tendency we are by no means exempt. At present its
expression in the terms of militarism is held in check by the traditional
love of Uberty for ourselves and for all mankind; but in the more sub-
tle forms of commercial ambition it may steal upon us unawares. Sir
Wilham Humber, in his history of British India, affirms that Great
Britain entered the East with no thought of mihtary empire. Her mo-
tive was a commercial motive. The subjugation of the peoples of
India was a dream born of her mercantile successes.
There is no guaranty, save one, and that is the pervading influence
of the spirit of Jesus Christ in our people, that commercial eagerness
shall not lead us on to aggression, and aggression issue in conquest.
Conquest may bring wealth, and conquest may bring glory, but the
price of it shall be to forfeit the chance of interpreting the mission of
Christianity to the Eastern world.
It is certain that the representatives of Western nations never can
reinterpret the mission of Christianity to the Orient, in part enraged, in
part jaded and dispirited, by sword-thrusts from the West, unless there
be shown in the nations they represent a purpose to temper selfish
ambition by that first law of Christ's Ufe, " good will toward men." In
these proud days of the repubhc we hear much spoken of our mighty
destiny among the nations. God save us from being inebriated with
the sense of destiny, and from losing the sense of justice to remote
nations and respect for Asiatic rights and aspirations.
It is also certain that the representatives of Western nations must
relatively fail to interpret Christianity to the scholarly minds of the
East, if they insist that Christianity necessarily implies ecclesiastical
institutions and dogmatic definitions identical with those of the Occi-
66 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
dental worshipers of Christ. To say this is in no sense an undervalua-
tion of our Christian theology. So far from undervaluing theology as a
hindrance upon life, I should esteem life as not worth living, were it not
for those apostolic beliefs concerning God and the person and work
of Christ which, because I hold them, and in the way in which I see
them, are my theology, upon which my life is founded. But I cannot
demand of men whose institutional conceptions are the fruit of Oriental
inheritancy, and whose points of contact with the revelation of God
in Christ are determined by the canons of Oriental thinking, that they
shall adopt all the intellectual terms in which I, of another inheritance,
formulate my belief in these great primary beliefs of Christianity, or else
be understood to have no share in an essence of truth which, on
Christ's own word, is of universal application and for universal posses-
sion. Let me rather so believe in the Holy Ghost, so trust that Light
which lighteth every man coming into the world, so honor the attempts
of all nations and kindreds and peoples to attain unto God, so wait for
the East to lift herself from her long bewilderment and for God to
complete what He Himself has begun, so dismiss that inherent scorn
of the East which has been the stumbling-block cast by Anglo-Saxon
pride in the path of Christ's world conquest, that in my heart there shall
be but a Godlike yearning for the souls of all men, and in my life a
Christlike mark of sacrifice.
There is but one way to preserve and to propagate this spirit in the
American nation, with our genius for commercialism, our love for
progress, our perilous pride of destiny. It is to promote the influence
of this large view of the mission of Christianity to the world upon the
millions of our younger citizens in their school and college days. In-
tensify this by wise and well-considered methods, and they shall de-
velop a sense of the brotherhood of the world, a zeal for the advance-
ment of the world, a deference for the rights of the world, a respect for
the aspirations of the world that shall make our national spirit an in-
terpretation of the mission of Christianity to the non-Christian races.
Permit these younger citizens, on the other hand, in the most impres-
sionable years of life, to drink only the heating wine of secular ambi-
tion, to acquire only the hunger for control of the world's resources,
to foster race prejudice and crude Occidentalism, and each generation,
moving further away from the ancestral heritages of the Christian re-
ligion, shall postpone the coming of the kingdom of God on earth.
Men, judging in haste, may call the deliberations of this Convention
academic, but time will show that, among the voices that have pleaded
from this platform for a greater emphasis upon religion throughout our
whole educational system, all have spoken as patriots, some as prophets.
ADDRESSES AT DEPARTMENTAL SESSIONS
The Joint Sessions of Departments
THE PLACE OF FORMAL INSTRUCTION IN RELIGIOUS
AND MORAL EDUCATION
In the Home
president G. STANLEY HALL, Ph.D., LL.D.
CLARK UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS
From a biological standpoint, good parenthood, in all that that noble
and pregnant term involves, is the supreme end of man. This means
that that man and woman is the best who produces and rears to fullest
bodily, mental, and moral maturity the most and the best children.
No other service equals this. God's covenant with Abraham, that if he
did His will his children should be as the stars, only expresses a uni-
versal law of life. Nature's one penalty for every kind of violation of
the fundamental laws of our being is progressive extinction. No mat-
ter what the sin, its punishment is some form of lessened vitality, per-
version or arrest. The ultimate test of every question of personal or
social virtue is its effect on the child in our midst, and yet more its
effect on the unborn, with the fate of countless generations of whom
every fruitful life is freighted. All the culture and institutions of every
race are sound and abiding, or false and transient, according as they
favor or hinder the transmission of the sacred torch of Ufe undimmed
to posterity. This is the standpoint of the new movement in eugenics
or practical heredity, a factor in every life far more important than en-
vironment and education combined. In this large sense let us not
forget that paternity is as much the culmination of man's education as
maternity is of woman's, and Mr, Galton's proposed certification and
endowment of those fittest for each is only recognizing the fact that
these are exactly the diplomas and these the highest degrees, summa
cum laude, which nature has always conferred on those who finish
their course in her great university.
How do we stand in the Hght of this great and awful bionomic law
that makes our very Hfe its sport ? Statistics show that among both
the oldest American stirps, and also among the educated classes,
marriages, in both sexes, are later and fewer, that children of those who
do marry are less numerous and less often nursed, and more often and
67
68 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
earlier committed to the care of nurses, governesses, teachers, and that all
four of these evils have grown steadily for at least two generations, while
among the children of the more prolific lower classes crime, as meas-
ured by the age of first committment, is every decade more precocious,
both in city and country, and also that the growing diffusion of school-
learning does not bring proportionate immunity from either vice or
crime, although it does give greater ability to conceal both. Other
studies, nearly half a score in number, made in various parts of the
country and on various classes, show a rapidly progressive ignorance
of the Bible, despite home, church, and Sunday school, so that for an
increasing percentage of our high-school pupils its best passages and
most salient incidents are so unknown that the commonest literary allu-
sions to its contents are not understood. Ancient German and Greek
religions are often better known. The problems are too vast and vital
to be solved by any quick devices, by resolutions, committees, or ad-
dresses. In view of the magnitude of the danger, I feel profoundly
that my, or perhaps any one's, program of how to meet it will seem
either radical or impractical, or both; but I could not be an optimist if
I did not beheve myself in its soundness and efficiency.
I. First of all, I would have worked out two concrete courses in
morals, — one for high school and one for early college classes, — de-
tailed and practical, rather than abstract and theoretical. This work
should begin in personal hygiene and regimen, and comprise diet, ex-
ercise, body keeping and training, and should enlist the strong and
legitimate passion of every young man to be. strong and every girl to
be beautiful and attractive. It should include dress, adornment, eti-
quette, and manners; should treat the seven deadly sins of the Cath-
olic Church, — pride, avarice, luxury, envy, anger, appetite, sloth, —
and the cardinal" virtues, — wisdom, courage, temperance, justice,
faith, hope, and love, — should involve something of temperament,
habit, character, livelihood, citizenship, example, self-respect and con-
trol, selfishness and honesty, patriotism, companionship and friend-
ship, obedience, usefulness, fun, ambition, methods of study, duties
to self and to relations and acquaintances, to state and church, and
should culminate in a few wholesome principles concerning purity,
marriage, home-making, fatherhood and motherhood, and duties to the
unborn. These latter topics should be taught in a condensed way
by hints, and without causing self-consciousness. All should be copi-
ously illustrated by examples drawn from history, literature, and life,
and while I would not have the religious motives omitted, the chief
appeal should be to prudence of a common-sense kind, and to the
INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 69
sentiment of honor, meant to be the chief advocate of the interests of
the race in the soul of the individual. We still lack a manual or cur-
riculum of this kind, but experience has proven the practicability of it,
and it is sure to come.
II. For some children the mother is literally in the place of God,
and all the sentiments that underlie both virtue and religion — viz.,
helplessness, dependence, reverence, devotion, loyalty, gratitude, love,
service — must in the child first be directed to her, and only later are
they transferred to deity, nature, and society. Every failure on her
part to supply food, care, love, authority, or to evoke any of the sen-
timents involves defect in the child's moral and religious nature. Hence
the mother who does most for herself does most for her child. So sub-
tle is this early rapport that nothing in her soul or body fails to register
its effect on the body and soul of the infant, who knows no other god
but its mother. For her, therefore, religious and moral nurture means
not only to crave motherhood for her own good, but to want the whole
of it, pain, joy, and all. The more we know of early childhood, the
clearer we see that it is what motherhood makes it; that motherhood
is therefore the most creative and divine thing in the world. Formal
instruction avails little without this work of preformation to prepare
the soil. Every kind and degree of maternal ministration of this kind
increases receptivity for teaching when its time comes.
III. Formal moral and religious instruction at home should, of
course, begin with stories, very simple, brief, and oft-repeated at first,
and rapidly increasing in number, kind, and complexity, as the child's
intelligence expands. Stories are the oldest form of transmitted cul-
ture and the most formative. All should have a moral more and more
disguised and implicit as the child advances in years, but the moral
should be ever present for sentiments, will, or both. I suspect and
challenge the word " formal " in my topic if it involves, as it does with
too many pedagogues, anything methodic. It should at first be as free
as possible from every element of didacticism, systematic sequence, or
the drill factors of the precisian. Form should be utterly subordi-
nated to content, and the tales should be of the greatest possible num-
ber and variety. Young children need elemental story-roots picturing
all the elemental good and evil in the world; — all these, of which the
kindergarten has a very precious kit, though far too few, too elaborated
and selected from too narrow a range, the child needs, and for these
its moral appetite is voracious. Every mother should be a story-teller,
and her repertory should be large, well-chosen, and ever replenished,
and the father should take his turn. What else was the twilight hour.
70 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
the fireplace, where that still survives, made for? Tales are the
natural soul-food of children, their native breath and vital air; but our
children are too often either story-starved or charged with ill-chosen
or ill-adapted twaddle tales. Good tales, well told, preform the
moral choices of adult life aright. Many Bible stories are among the
best, but these are not enough, and there are not enough adapted to
any age, so we should go outside, and draw on other sources. Here
our need is a canon of well-chosen ones from a very wide field, cast
into the right form for each age.
IV. The religion of nature should not be omitted in the home.
Everything has been worshiped by primitive man, and here, too, the
child tends to repeat the history of the race. Moon, sun, stars, the
boundless sky and its great void, wind, stars, lightning, wind, cloud,
shadow, sea, mountains, fire, trees, flowers, animals, and, lastly, man
himself, the crown and epitome of all, — all these have been supreme
objects of worship somewhere and at some time, and the vestiges of
these old nature-religions are many and potent in the childish heart
and soul, and all need some development, for how shall the soul adore
the unseen till it has first felt the power of the visible things that declare
the glory of God? What kind of a father is he who has never taken
his children on a walk in the country, where they could be at least ex-
posed to these influences? What more hallowed way of spending
Sunday afternoon in every season? And in what environment does
parenthood stand forth in more dignity and majesty than on such a
background of nature, the mighty parent of us all ?
V. As to prayers at the mother knee, in the family, grace at table,
Bible reading and memorizing, these are just as precious home influ-
ences as they ever were, or perhaps as any one has ever claimed them
to be; but they are all rapidly declining, even in Christian homes.
They ought to be maintained for their influence on the children, even
if there were no other reason. This aspect of the decadence of the
home is to me peculiarly pathetic. Must this daily consecration of the
household to heaven lapse to a mere vanishing remainder? Is a
psychologist or pedagogue old-fashioned to plead for these, when even
the clergy say so little for it ? Many can at least have sacred songs and
hymns in the home on fit occasions, and these sink deep and bear rich
fruitage later.
VI. If formal instruction means catechism of either the Westminster
or more modern and trivialized form, I cannot plead for it, if for no
other reason than that there are better uses of the scanty time, and
dogma is everywhere giving way to life. Moral and religious training
INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 71
for children is, in the home, essentially informal, and non-examinable.
It is seed cast on the waters, which will never again be seen as seed,
but only as the harvest of later years.
Finally, and above all, instruction is the atmosphere of the home.
The child's intellect is very small and feeble, but there is nothing in
the domestic environment to which its soul is not responsive. Every
cloud in the heaven of the parents' love for each other, every moment
of suspicion, every word of censure, every act of indifference, wilts the
child's moral nature. The home must be first, and not second to busi-
ness or to society. It must be happy, for young souls expand and
grow only where quiet joy reigns. • It must be pervaded by a high sense
of duty, which is best imparted, not by conscious and methodic incul-
cations, but by the infection of example. There must be high ideals
and standards in all matters, order, system, regularity, and therefore
there must be discipline and no overindulgence. The rod must not
be absolutely impossible, but the requirements must not be fitful or
changeable.
Happily, we live in a day of rapidly increasing knowledge of chil-
dren, and the more we know of them, the more they are desired, and
the more clearly it is seen that their bodies and souls are worthier than
anything else in the world of love, reverence, and service, and that noth-
ing supplies parents with such potent motives to become and to do
the best they can as the desire to be the better able to bring their
children to the fullest possible maturity of all their powers.
In the Sunday School
REV. EVERETT D. BURR, D.D.
PASTOR FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, NEWTON CENTER, MASSACHUSETTS
When God gave the Bible to mankind he had thought of the kind
of man to whom He gave it. Its adaptation to human need is hke the
light which adjusts itself to the eye of the minutest insect and the ex-
tended vision of man. This adaptability of the Scripture is not hmited
to the varied needs of humanity in the large, but to the changing needs
of the individual hfe in its varied developmental periods.
Paul knew one Hfe at least that from his point of view illustrated
what the Scripture could do in the culture of the soul. Of Timothy
he said," From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are
able to make thee wise unto salvation through the faith which is in
Christ Jesus. All Scripture, God-breathed, is profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the
72 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."
From childhood to manhood, from the early years of immaturity to
the perfecting of character, the Scripture can be both instructor and
curriculum.
In methods of secular education the child is no longer a problem,
but an opportunity. Time was when the child was thought to be a
volume to be read, a riddle to be solved, a block to be chis'eled into
form : but now we are abandoning the artificial methods and are deaUng
with soul Hfe as the scientific horticulturist would deal with the plant,
by a method in harmony with nature, which recognizes the four seasons,
and dares allow that this new expression of the life of God, a child,
shall not be forced to fit a man's idea of what he should be, but rather
fulfill the divine intention. The new education understands its first
duty to be to free a soul from physical limitations; to open a child's
eyes and teach him to see, to unstop the ears and bid him to hear, to
guide the untrained muscles in their first adventures — in a word, to set
free the entempled soul in self-expression.
The modern teacher does not seek to instruct, but to educate, not
to inform the child, but to form a new life in the child, not to leave a
thought, but to find one, not to project himself upon the pupil, but to
enable the pupil to project himself as a new force into the world.
One cannot define the ultimate aims of the true education ■ with-
out discovering that they are coincident with the subHme purposes
of Christian religion. Education is the emancipation of soul.
The salvation of the soul, as implied by the traditional teaching of
the Church, is something independent of time, something which can be
accomplished in a day. But this implies that rehgion is only a medi-
cine to cure a disease. The great Teacher defined the salvation which
He came to give in terms of life. In His view, religion is a diet to nour-
ish the spirit.
The method of soul-saving is conversion. The method of soul-
culture is education. The former seeks excitement; the latter, delib-
eration. The former has a definite end in view, and when the end is
reached, is satisfied; its task is finished and the evangelist is triumph-
ant. The latter has no end in view; the work is never finished, the
process is endless. In the former method, formal instruction prevails,
of necessity; in the latter, vital processes must have sway.
In the light of the new education the older religious conception of
conversion of soul and the modern conception of culture of soul meet
and mingle. They are not contradictory and mutually exclusive; they
are interpenetrating and complemental.
INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 73
Froebel presents a child in his threefold relationship: he is a child,
of nature by his physical inheritances, a child of humanity by his social
inheritances, a child of God by his religious inheritances. The child
has relations by virtue of his inheritances of body, soul, and spirit
with these three worlds. The education of a child consists in bringing
him to understand this threefold relationship. Our experience as
Christian teachers has been meager, or our eyes blinded, if we have not
seen the souls of children expand, as well as the souls of those who
taught them, as they have walked these plain paths into the larger
truths of the divine revelation.
In what is distinctly known as secular education, formal instruction,
or what might be called the library method, is being displaced by what
might be called the laboratory method, for in the light of modern psychol-
ogy it is seen that the soul makes its larger acquisitions by indirections.
' If you will do, ye shall know." This is the Christian law of mind.
Activity opens all the channels of approach for truth to the soul.
How can one know God? By formal instruction in Biblical liter-
ature and history, by a mastery of the manuscripts or a memorizing
of the catechism ? Does a child know God when he can recite the books
of the Bible or tell the Ten Commandments ? The knowledge of God
must come by experience and activity. Even formal instruction in
the Scriptures will not induce a religious life. The Bible is not religion,
nor does it contain religion. It is a description of religion.
Formal instruction has a small place in religious experience, if that
experience consists in the knowledge and love of God and the conse-
quent joy. There must be a larger method. The culture of soul re-
sults from or consists in its reactions. No impression without ex-
pression can ever be healthy or helpful. An impression which simply
flows in at the pupil's eyes and ears and in no way modifies his active
life is an impression really lost. It is psychologically incomplete. As
a mere impression, an impression is a failure. It must produce some
motor consequence to be of worth; the only durable impressions are
those in the light of which we speak or act.
Learning must be transformed into life. One would not expect
to find the yeast if he made a cross-section of a loaf of bread. A cow
eats grass all day, but we do not expect the cow to give grass. She is
expected to give milk. A boy may study arithmetic and learn to do a
few examples correctly. He can tell if each shoe is to have five nails,
how many it will take to shoe a^ horse. But suppose the horse's shoes
needed six nails? He is baffled because he has found a case which was
not met by his example; but when he masters the principle of which
74 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
his sum is but an illustration, he can address himself to the problems
of life as they come.
The larger method is satisfied with no education unless it organize
in the resources of the human soul those powers of conduct which shall
fit him to live in the world of men and things. This, too, ought to tbe
the ultimate aim of the teaching in the Sunday school, to organize
capacities for conduct, and what he learns on the Lord's Day to be so
related to what he learns every day that he will see that his every-day
life affords a laboratory for conduct ; the activities and relations of the
home, the school, and the play-ground become a part of the one great
life which he is to hve in the apphcation of rehgious principle to
action.
Religion is a hfe to be lived, and the world demands of the educa-
tional work of the Church that those who are instructed in its Sunday
schools shall be equipped for Hving the life of God in His large world.
The world demands that the science of psychology shall claim its whole
field and no longer consider the knowledge of religious truth as the one
exception to the great laws of mind.
The Bible is the great text-book for the Sunday school, but does
not the Bible adjust itself to these larger demands of modern education ?
It may well form the curriculum of study, may well be made the basis
of the rehgious education. We go to botany to learn what men have
proved to be the laws which govern the flowers; we go to grammar to
learn what men have proved to be the laws of expression; we go to na-
ture to learn what the ages have proved to be the great laws of Hfe; we
go to the Bible for the principles of religion, for the Bible is a record
of religious experience, an expression of the religious life.
The adaptabihty of the Scripture to the varied needs of the grow-
ing hfe is apparent. In early childhood the prevaihng mental Hfe
is through sense-perceptions. The world of things is first, and the
Bible meets the child at the threshold of his temple of learning with a
revelation of God in His works. The heavens and the earth are the
first elements which appeal to him. Through these he gets the first
gHmpses of the glory of God. The sense of God's power. His wisdom
and His law wiU induce reverence, trust, love, and obedience in the
child soul. The interests of the growing boy are largely personal.
He loves people and is interested in what they do. Just here the Bible
offers the attractive narrative, the movements and achievements of
heroes, and one by one the boy may become familiar with the great
characters, the great movements, the great epochs, and the great Life,
and through these gain a knowledge of God's care, His providence, His
INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 75
protection, and, as by a revelation, find it easy thinking from spelling
father with a little " f " to spelling it with a big " F."
In like manner, as the abihties, the interests, and needs of the dis-
tinct stages of development of soul-life appear, the Bible seems to
melt and pour itself into the waiting matrix, making possible a selection
of lesson material adapted to the mental powers, the fundamental in-
terests, and the spiritual needs of the expanding soul. At every point
of his progress in the knowledge of rehgious truth, the Bible will com-
mand the intellectual respect of the student and awaken his enthusi-
astic interest ; his rehgious and moral needs will be supplied by truth
suitable to them, even as these needs widen and become more com-
plex, and his expanding life will steadily acquire strength, breadth,
and symmetry. By such a method no truth will be unassimilated, for
each will enter into the character, the new will be related to the old,
and his rehgious education in the knowledge of God will be co-ordi-
nated with his culture in other fields.
How pitiably inadequate our present Sunday-school methods seem
when the greatness of the text-book and the sacredness of the human
soul are considered. The farther from the shore, the deeper the sea;
the higher the hill, the wider the prospect; the deeper the shaft, the
more precious the metal. For the larger culture of mind let there be
the profounder and more scientific study of the Bible.
Through the training in the Scripture one may gain the sensitive
conscience. The full sensitizing of conscience cannot be reahzed
without an inteUigent mastery of the great ethical principles underlying
the institutions of Israel. The Old Testament writers seem to have
planted their feet immovably upon the one great fact, viz. ; that this
world was built on righteousness and administered on principles of
justice. The Prophecy of Habakkuk is the aegis of municipal reform;
the Prophecy of Amos the hand-book of social ethics; the prophet
Isaiah, the ideal statesman.
Why do our young men leave the Sunday school? Because we
have not been wise enough to present to them opportunities for the
study of such rich fives as Isaiah, Josiah, and Samuel. Young men
with studious minds crave sharp distinctions; they draw rigid fines
of demarkation. They accept no compromise. Conscience is dom-
inant in youth and needs the splendid girding which such a training in
the great moral struggles of the leading characters in the Bible can
alone afford.
Again to the training in the Scripture must one look for the power
of a well-girded will. The kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of divine
76 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
intention. The sublime secret of the greatest hfe is that He came " to
do the will of God." The most dramatic picture in all the revealed
word of God is the waiting Deity looking with silent scrutiny upon the
sons of men to see if there was one who did His will, when the silence
is broken by the voice of the eternal Son of God dedicating Himself
to obedience in the words, " Lo, I come to do thy will, in the volume
of the book it is written of me."
Again, training in the Scripture alone can give a pure heart. " I
have hid thy word in my heart, that I shall not sin agaist thee " ; "Al-
ready ye are clean, through the word which I have spoken unto you."
Here, then, is the man of God perfect, thoroughly furnished unto
every good work. To make such a man is the supreme function of the
Sunday school. To the realization of this purpose the Church of
God in the world to-day is summoned by a clarion note from the skies,
and to this she is urged by the enthusiasm for education which is thrilUng
the thoughtful world; to this she must be drawn by the pathetic appeal
of lives imperfect, imprisoned, and imperiled, lives stunted and starved,
hves ignorant and indolent, Hves prejudiced and palsied, lives that
might. have been strong, brave, hopeful, tolerant, symmetrical, and use-
ful if the Church had done her duty by them.
Let the Church school in the new century be the center of her
power. As she has commanded the service of the best architects in
building her houses of worship and demands the trained and equipped
musicians to lead in her service of song, let her command, for the in-
struction of the youth, the trained teachers who, beUeving their work
to be the highest on earth, will bring to their tasks intelligence and
devotion, science and consecration, and make full use of the Book of
God in building the noble structure of the man of God who shall be
perfect and thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
In the Young Men's Christian Associations
GEORGE ALBERT COE, Ph.D.
JOHN EVANS PROFESSOR OF MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHY IN NORTH-
WESTERN UNIVERSITY
I. The Associations have Become Teaching Bodies. The Young
Men's Christian Associations constitute a movement in practical re-
ligion. They have endowed no chairs for inyestigating rehgious theo-
ries; they have formulated no confession of faith; they entertain no
purpose of taking the place of the churches as teachers of doctrine.
The evangelical formula contained in the definition of active member-
INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 77
ship is not applied to individuals, but to churches. It is not a creed or
a program of teaching, but rather a means of securing and holding a
definite constituency. In the future, as in the past, the chief work of
the associations will consist in supplying to young men and boys cer-
tain incentives and privileges that the churches, as a rule, do not
provide. Nevertheless, the teaching function is growing. First,
the coming of the student association brings in the idea of spirit-
ual growth or education through study. Second, the establishment
of boys' departments means essentially the reHgious education of boys.
Third, the growth of association Bible-study directly involves formal
instruction.
Within the last seven or eight years the associations, federated under
the International Committee, have become a great teaching body. In
their classes are enrolled 11,000 boys, 26,000 students, and 25,000 other
men — over 60,000 in all. Nearly 1,200 employed officers, and nearly
700 other men, besides some thousands of student leaders, have charge
of classes. More than twoscore different courses are provided; writ-
ten examinations are now offered, and a beginning has been made in
the gradation of pupils and of courses. The educational idea is so
fully adopted by association leaders that psychology, the study of ado-
lescence, and the principles of teaching have a place in the curriculum
of training for secretaries.
II. The Theory of Association Teaching. What is formally taught
to these 60,000 pupils ? An answer is not easy, for there is no absolute
dividing line between formal and informal instruction. Any belief
that is constantly assumed by a teacher, though it be never formally
stated, acquires the force of positive instruction. Theoretically, how-
ever, the associations have a definite poUcy. If we divide Biblical
material into theories (including doctrine, philosophy, and hypotheses
of criticism), facts (including ascertained knowledge of the Biblical
history and Uterature), and duties (including all insight into the uni-
versal laws of spiritual life), then we may say that all Association study
is intended to focus upon duties rather than facts or theories. The aim
is to bring out the truths that are vital for the pupil's character and
growth, and for society's well-being. This is called devotional and
practical study.
The courses vary with the pupils. For boys, stories are provided
that enrich the imagination and purify the ideals; for working-men,
railroad men, soldiers, sailors, salesmen, and accountants, more or
less detached topics that bear directly upon personal religion; for col-
legians, courses more detailed and more systematic.
78 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Courses for students include more of fact and of theory than courses
for other groups. It is assumed that the student has opportunity for
historical and critical study in the college curriculum, and there is no
intention to duplicate such study. The aim is rather to secure the daily
use of the Scriptures for the purpose of personal growth.
III. The Results. This is the theory of all Association teaching.
In practice it has contributed materially to the renaissance of popular
Bible-study. The contents of the Bible are being learned by scores
of thousands of persons whom no other teaching body would be able to
influence in similar measure. No doubt this study is somewhat super-
ficial; there is some admixture of historical error; yet a mass of mental
images and of notions of unquestionable value is actually being fixed
in the minds of the pupils. Of the quickening effect upon spiritual
life there can be no question. I have witnessed the influence of devo-
tional study upon college students for too many years to have any doubt
on his point.
These good results have been attained in spite of the fact that much
of Association teaching has been managed in the interest of a particular
theory of the Scriptures. The text-books decline, it is true, to enter
upon critical questions, yet some of them are built upon extreme,
though generally unexpressed, theories concerning points of critical
scholarship. Whether such theories are radical or conservative mat-
ters not; the objection is the same.
Further, the devotional method encovirages the teaching of dogmas,
but discourages the application of rational tests thereto. An inter-
national secretary recommends that college students spend a month
each on such doctrines as sin, faith, regeneration, the atonement, the
divinity of Christ, etc., and that the leaders in such study be students.
It is easy to see whither this advice tends. A student leader of strong
personality will be filled with zeal for such doctrinal ideas as have hap-
pened to stick to him, while the average leader will humbly follow the
hints that come from international headquarters. In the latter case,
some international secretary, whose notions may be either ancient,
medieval, or modern, becomes the doctrinal teacher of indefinite thou-
sands of young men. I believe that, for pupils of proper age and prepa-
ration, more rather than less doctrinal instruction should be given than
at present, but, obviously, the associations have not solved the problem
of how to attain this end.
IV. The Associations are Advancing in Methods and Point of View.
There is in the associations a healthy and growing sentiment in favor
of better methods and a clearer understanding of the practical point of
INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 79
view in Bible study. It is coming to be seen that the once dominant
distinction between devotional and intellectual study confuses the pur-
pose of study with the method of it. All real study is intellectual, what-
ever the purpose. Inferior intellectual material can never be the best
food for spiritual life. The unity of the mind is axiomatic in education,
whether the pupil be a factory operative or a collegian. We must there-
fore re-interpret our classification of BibUcal material. Theories, facts,
and duties are clearly not so much separable kinds of material as points
of possible emphasis. Any attempt to teach duties without reference
to facts and theories is pretty sure to result in somebody's teaching his
own particular view under some other name. The duties inculcated
in the Scriptures come to us, not in abstract form, but incarnated in
historical personages and events, and some degree of correct appre-
hension of this historical element is essential to any safe teaching of
the practical aspects of the Bible.
Nevertheless, the associations rightly places the emphasis upon the
practical. Their function is not to investigate theoretical questions,
or to teach theories as such, but only to use for practical purposes what-
soever is reasonably certain. While, therefore, in some respects they
may lead, in others they must follow. As in the past, so in the future,
the glory of the association movement will consist in zeal in good works,
and in a peculiarly ready adaptability to the practical needs of special
classes. This is different from either radicalism or conservatism in
matters of theological dispute. All that the modern movement in
Biblical learning can reasonably demand of the associations is that
they shall respect sound methods of ascertaining facts, and recognize
facts that have been reasonably ascertained.
The last Bible-study prospectus announces a course that will com-
prise a study of " the main facts touching the history and composition
of the Bible." Such a task is one of exceeding deUcacy, and it is doubt-
ful whether it can be so discharged as to satisfy all wings of evangelical
sentiment. Perhaps this of itself is not a too serious matter; what is
really serious is our responsibihty for reaching and teaching the actual
truth. What attitude, then, should we who are Association workers
adopt toward the historical movement in the investigation of the Scrip-
tures? Should our position be conservative or progressive? or should
we dodge the issue? " When in doubt," says an American humorist,
"tell the truth!" The more one practises this advice, the more its
wisdom appears. Shall we dodge the issues ? No, let us acknowledge
that there are issues. Shall we take the conservative or the progress-
ive attitude? The answer is, let us tell the truth; let us tell all the truth
8o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
that we know, failing not to distinguish between what we know and
what we are merely accustomed to assume. But we are uncertain about
many points, and we are not competent to settle them. Well, then,
let us tell the truth about our own uncertainty and incompetence! But
will not this policy unsettle our pupils and endanger the spiritual im-
pressions that we desire to make? Still the humorist is right. Let us
tell to ourselves the truth- that the spiritual power of the Scriptures is
at its highest only when the sacred writings are apprehended in their
genuine historical actuality.
In the Public School
GEORGE H. MARTIN
SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.
I shall use the time allotted to me in presenting the result of a recent
experiment.
It occurred to me to inquire whether the pupils in our schools, with-
out formal instruction, having learned no precepts, had from the in-
formal, occasional teaching in the schools, from their own thinking
and under the influence of their homes, acquired any conception of
moral obligations which they could express in words if occasion arose
for them to do so.
Accordingly, I asked the principals of several grammar schools to
obtain for me papers, from the^ members of their highest class, written
impromptu on the topics: Our duties to our famihes; Our duties to
our city; — half of the class writing upon each. This was done, and
they were sent to me.
The papers treating of the family affirm moral obligations not only
in a broad way, but in specific applications of general principles. They
specify obedience to parents, — honor and respect for parents; respect
for the older brothers and sisters; care, guidance, and example for the
younger ones.
They, without exception, declare the duty of helpful service for all
the members of the family, and they specify a great variety of ways in
which that service may be rendered. They speak of present obliga-
tions, but many of them speak of their duty to assist as becoming later
a duty to support when their parents are old.
The papers from one school dwelt with special emphasis upon the
duty to be cheerful in the home, to carry sunshine, and to be kind in
speech. These papers are not cold statements of obligation. They
are warm with filial regard and love. They dwell at length upon the
INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 8i
love of their parents for them, the sacrifices in their behalf in their in-
fancy and later Hfe, and they see their own obligations in the nature
of recognition and return for what they have received.
The other papers, treating of civic duties, deal with the subject in
a similar way. The children dwell at length upon what the city has
done for them in its protection and care. They would, by their orderly
conduct on the street, by their scrupulous care of public property, by
their efforts to keep the streets and sidewalks clean, and their own home
premises neat, try to show their appreciation of what they have received.
They are proud of their city, and would do nothing to dishonor it.
They would speak well of it. They think that when the time comes
they should vote, and vote for good men, and should meet their share
of the pubUc expense.
Such, in brief, is the result of my experiment. It satisfied me that
our American children, in the process of being educated in schools,
said by some to be devoid of moral instruction, schools affirmed by
some to be breeding places for unmoral or immoral character, are ac-
quiring ideas of moral obHgation sufficient, if put into practice in daily
living, to make them safe, useful, and honorable members of society.
We have no right to ask for more, and I have never seen any scheme
of formal instruction which'seemed to me likely to accomplish so much.
Papers on Moral Duties, Prepared by High School Students
A. our duties to our families
I am the eldest daughter. In the family there are four children
younger, and it seems to me now, and I think it will always seem, that I
owe more to my family than any of the younger children. I was born
in Russia, and came to America when I was about two years old.
My first and greatest duty is to serve them as they have served me,
to have the same feelings concerning the bringing up of the younger
children, and that of making as cheerful a home as I have had.- The
great aim in my life is to repay my parents by every possible kindness.
I can now appreciate the trouble that they had in bringing me up and
in putting me on my feet and in sending me to school. After I gradu-
ate from school it is my duty to help make a living so that my parents
need not struggle so hard to keep us in a comfortable condition.
Their sending me to school has taught me things I shall never forget.
I cannot tell anybody what the teacher and school has done for me.
I can certainly say that the teachers come next to my parents. Besides
book knowledge, I have learned in school to be good, to be honest, to
obey, in fact, to do many things that help build a noble character.
This is the ninth year I have been to school, and every day I learn
more and more. I simply cannot express my gratitude for my school
opportunities.
82 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Every man has a duty to his family, and that is to repay them as
they have served him. A man's life depends wholly on how he was
brought up by his parents and famihes. I think the most ignorant
people want their sons and daughters to be good, to do good. Above
all we should be helpful in every way when our parents are old and
feeble and depend on their children for all they need as their children
have depended on them in childhood.
B. OUR DUTIES TO OUR CITY
Our duties to our city are to do. what we know is right, and to do
all that we can to beautify it and make it better. We should not walk
on the lawns of our private houses or on the grass in our parks and pub-
lic gardens which were laid for our benefit. We should not kill or annoy
in any way the little gray squirrels of which there are so many in our
city, and we should do all that we can to tame them and feed them
so that they will stay with us.
A most important duty is to abide by the laws of the city, not to ride
our wheels on the sidewalks, nor to drive the automobiles and motor
cars above the speed limit, and this last is a most important law and one
that is violated very often. A great many people run their automo-
biles faster than the law allows, and many accidents happen because
of their recklessness.
We should ' be careful not to annoy our citizens by our playing ;
we should try not to break any windows with our balls, although now
and then a ball badly thrown will go through a pane of glass. Then,
too, with winter coming, we must be careful not to hit any one with a
snowball, and we must keep the snow off of our sidewalks, and the ice
well covered with ashes or gravel so that people can walk about more
easily and safely. If every one did that, there would be fewer accidents.
There are a great many more duties to our city than I have time or
space to write about, and am sure that if everyone took pains to find
out what they were and did them, that we should have a model city.
In the Preparatory School
REV. ENDICOTT PEABODY, D. D.
HEAD MASTER GROTON SCHOOL, GROTON, MASSACHUSETTS
What are the formal things in a rehgious school to which a person
of another religion might perhaps take exception, or what might be
considered the characteristic features of such a school?
In the first place, there are the morning and evening prayers, which
all, masters and boys, and anybody else who is connected with that
institution, attend. Second, there is the attendance, once a week at least,
at a recitation or a lecture'upon a religious subject, what are called often-
times " sacred studies," where there is a regular curriculum. Third,
the opportunity that comes at confirmation time, when boys are pre-
paring for confirmation, or in the other churches for what is called
INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 83
" joining the church." Fourth, the chapel, with the services arranged
especially with a view to interesting the boys. Fifth, the school sermon,
preached, not by one man after another coming along from outside
because he is a famous person, but preached, as a rule, by the man or
men who are working in the school.
These are the formal features in the reUgious education of a school.
Now, how shall they be connected with the lives of the boys themselves ?
In some schools there are prayer-meetings. No doubt the prayer-
meetings among boys have been productive of much good, but I think
that there are great dangers connected with them. In the first place,
the best boys, on the whole, at any rate the most sincere, and perhaps the
strongest boys, don't know how to describe their rehgious feeHngs. And
then when you get a boy who is fluent in his description of his rehgious
emotions, the danger is. that the emotion won't hitch on to conduct.
The danger is, that bis expression may run far beyond his experience,
and after a year or two there comes a reaction; he looks back upon it,
and finds himself utterly ashamed of what he said, and he hasn't
much sympathy with the rehgion which prompted him to say it.
I believe that a boy's religious life should be expressed in active
service. Near every school, there are a certain number of people who
are not ministered unto; there your superfluous energy may find vent.
Your masters and your boys may establish missions there, and boys
may teach in the Sunday schools.
In preparatory schools the boys are usually well-to-do, and they
can do something for the brethren who are less fortunate. They can
have clubs and summer camps for them; and as they try to guide
these summer camps, and try to help the boys who come to the clubs
or come to the camp, they have got to live the right kind of lives them-
selves. That is, I think, the particular point.
But those are outside things. There is the private life of each boy
that is touching the lives of all the boys. If you care for them, believe
in them, trust them, and make them your fellow-workers, they will
respond, and the older boys will look after the younger boys. And
gradually that idea will permeate through the school among the younger
boys, and you can be perfectly sure that your school is rid of the im-
morality, and the dishonesty, and minor offenses against morality,
which are often the curses of boys' schools.
Then there is the influence of the masters. Of course it is perfectly
clear that in the universities you cannot require that your teacherr
should be religious men, but in the school they ought to be positively
Christian men.
84 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
These are the forces; the spirit of the masters, the co-operation of
the boys, the missionary idea permeating the school. Those are the
inside spiritual grace, and the Bible, sacred studies, and morning
and evening prayer are the outward and visible forms.
When a schoolmaster has such opportunities, and when he can get
such fellow-workers, I do not see why he cares to change his posi-
tion for that of any other man in the world.
In the College
PRESIDENT GEORGE HARRIS, D.D., LL.D.
AMHERST COLLEGE, AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS.
There are three kinds of formal instruction in religion and morals
possible to the college.
The first is instruction by regular courses in religion. In college
the Bible can be studied from the historical and critical points of view.
The teacher of to-day need not be cautious about modifying precon-
ceived theories of inerrancy and infallibility, because students, for the
most part, have no cherished theory of any sort. His work is construc-
tive, to show the history of an ancient people, the growth of its litera-
ture, the development and significance of its ritual, the value of its con-
tribution to true religion. It is important that educated men know the
Bible for what it is: the greatest force in civilization. A curriculum is
deficient which does not include the English Bible as a course of study,
to be mastered as any history or literature is mastered, in scientific and
spiritual apprehension. This course should be elective. The fact
that every college has students who are not Protestants, that it has
Jews, Catholics, even Japanese and Chinese, precludes a require-
ment of studying Christianity.
The history of the church and the history of Christian thought are
suitable courses for colleges, although I should not be strenuous to
provide them. The study of European history necessarily includes
the history of the Church and the history of doctrine.
The history of Oriental religions may be offered as a course of study.
The best approach to the history of Asiatic peoples is through their
religions. Indeed, their customs, civilization, and government cannot
well be understood without such knowledge. Now that relations with
the great nations of the East are becoming more intimate, there is a
practical value in the study of their religions, even if there were less
truth in them than there is.
The second kind of formal instruction is the part which the Bible
INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 85
and its religion have in other studies, or, at least, may have and should
have. The Hterature of our own tongue is imbued with the thought
and even the language of the English Bible. Some of the best htera-
ture is partly unintelHgible to those who are ignorant of the Bible.
Shakespeare, Milton, Browning, Emerson, Arnold, are fehcitous in their
allusions to Scripture. The classical allusions in L'AUegro and Comus
are traced to their sources; why not the Biblical allusions in Paradise
Lost and the Hymn on the Nativity? With Browning's Saul the
story itself should be read; with the Death on the Desert, the story
of John and of the Gnostic heresy. The nearest book of reference,
constantly consulted in the study of literature, should be the Bible.
Why should not portions of the Bible be included directly in Hterature
courses? Why should not the subhme prophecies of Isaiah, the de-
votional and nature-poetry of the psalms, the meditations of John,
the theology of Paul, the parables and precepts of Jesus, be as carefully
studied as the poems of Homer and Horace, the orations of Cicero and
Demosthenes? The Bible is not so sacred as religion that it may not
be investigated as literature.
Another study includes moral instruction, — philosophy, — insep-
arable from ethics. Every problem of philosophy has a bearing on
life. What is philosophy but the theory of life ? Nor can ethics be
separated from religion. How natural that such courses as the fol-
lowing, taken from college catalogues, should be announced: The
Philosophy of Nature, with Especial Reference to Man's Place in
Nature; Fundamental Conceptions of Natural Science and their Re-
lation to Ethical and Religious Truth; the Theory of Morals, consid-
ered constructively; Ethics of the Social Question; the Problems of
Poor-reHef; the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the labor
question in the light of ethical theory. And these, from another cata-
logue, also under Philosophy; Metaphysics of Ethics; Objective
Ethics; Philosophy and Evolution of Rehgion; Christian Apologetics;
History and Exposition of Christian Doctrine.
The third kind of instruction is the religious services which are
maintained. Religion should have a home and should be at home in
the college. The college pulpit is a throne of power. The great
preacher comes gladly to the college with the message of truth and
righteousness. The student responds with all his heart, for the in-
tellectual man is the spiritual man. If you should sit Sunday after
Sunday in a college congregation, as I do, you would find students lis-
tening eagerly to preaching on the real, human Christ and on the service
of man to man. Every college and university should, if possible,
86 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
have its own pulpit. Daily services of Scripture reading, singing,
and prayer make their impression. Students, at least, become familiar
with the Bible read responsively or listened to.
Voluntary associations of students for religious culture, for Bible
study, and for Christian service are, when rightly conducted, of great
moral and religious power.
There is more practical religion in the colleges to-day than in any
period of their history. Cant and pretense are not tolerated; irrational
doctrine is discarded; but faith, hope, love, character, are exalted. The
university and college should and may encourage, by teaching and by
influence, sane, healthy, God-loving and man-saving religion.
/. THE COUNCIL OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS ON THE WORK OF THE DEPART-
MENT FOR THE YEAR
PROFESSOR FRANK K. SANDERS, Ph.D.,D.D.
DEAN YALE DIVINITY SCHOOL, NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT
This is the third nominal gathering of the Council of Religious Ed-
ucation, but the first one which really aims to execute the functions in-
trusted to it at the organization of the Association. There have been
many hindrances to the proper adjustment of its work to that of the
departments of the Association, all of which have, in the main, been
surmounted. It is with a hopeful spirit that we assemble to-day for
participation in the session.
Much lack of certainty has been expressed in regard to the legitimate
functions of this Council of Religious Education. Its objective is thus
described in the constitution of the Association:
" The Council shall have for its object to reach and to disseminate
correct thinking on all general subjects relating to religious and moral
education. Also, in co-operation with the other departments of the
Association, it shall initiate, conduct, and guide the thorough investiga-
tion and consideration of important educational questions within the
scope of the Association. On the basis of its investigations and consid-
erations the Council shall make to the Association, or to the Board of
Directors, such recommendations as it deems expedient relating to the
work of the Association. "
In accordance with the constitution, we are to exercise the impor-
tant functions of determining the problems of real importance in the
field of religious education, of organizing the forces of the Association
for their thorough investigation, and of the formulation of the results
of these investigations for effective use.
The Association stands for the declaration of ideals, of true working
standards in religious education. Such standards may be attained only
through the most careful and comprehensive study of conditions, re-
sources, existing methods, suggested advances. To formulate such
working standards requires the co-operation of men already accustomed
to scientific investigation, whose judgments will be uninfluenced by the
pressing demands of production. In the actual work of any depart-
ment of rehgious and moral education — such as those which deal with
87
88 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
the interests of the Sunday school, the church, or the schools — many
methods must be adopted which fall far short of the ideal, which are
merely practicable; but there is all the greater need for a study of ideal
conditions, for the erection of a standard with which all may compare
their actual achievment. It is common enough to hear sneers at the-
orists, yet a sound theory or a wise working standard is the strongest
assurance of a rapidly progressing growth in effectiveness.
While we of the Council, therefore, seem to be restricted to the op-
portunity of talking or writing, rather than of doing things, our work will
be of supreme and fundamental importance in the proper develop-
ment of the Association.
Many obstacles have delayed the proper organization of our own work.
The membership was not placed on a working basis until September
last. Our history has been as follows: while the Council was clearly
projected at the Chicago convention of February, 1903, it was not un-
til nearly a year later that twenty-six men, a little over one third of the
contemplated membership of the Council, were elected by the Exec-
utive Board. To these, seven were added by the Council at its meeting
of March 4, 1904, at Philadelphia. On July 20, 1904, the Executive
Board increased the existing membership of thirty-three by adding
fourteen others, bringing the total membership to forty-seven, which
is the present nurnber.
In connection with the meetings of the International Congress of
Arts and Sciences at St. Louis in September, in which so large a propor-
tion of our membership participated, and at the time of the semi-annual
meeting of the Board of Directors, it was hoped that a good opportu-
nity would be given to the Council to hold a session for the initiation of
its work. Such a session was held, but the attendance was not repre-
sentative enough to warrant the officers of the Council in inaugurating
an active campaign. Many helpful views were interchanged, however,
and an impetus given to the work of the Council.
Since September the Executive Committee has come to the conclu-
sion that it would refer to this meeting in Boston the responsibility for
the inauguration of our important work. We have taken pains to se-
cure from the membership, by correspondence, an expression of opinion
in regard to the problems of religious education, to which we must
first of all give our attention. The suggestions we have partly formu-
lated in the list of themes for discussion submitted to the Council at
its preceding session, and partly presented in the formal program of this
hour. It is for the Council to select from these the problems to which
we shall immediately give our attention, or to formulate others which
shalllbe more useful.
PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS ON WORK OF THE COUNCIL 89
Of our membership of forty-seven we may truly say that it repre-
sents all sections of the country, all types of scholarly mind, all helpful
points of view. It follows neither denominational nor sectarian lines.
Its one purpose is the attainment of religious truth and its effective
presentation to men.
During the year, the Executive Board has classified the greater part
of our membership into six groups, the term of the first group expiring
in 1905. When our membership is full, the term of each member
elected will be for six years, and ten will be elected each year. In
these and other details the proper working of the Council begins with
this gathering.
THE FIELD OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN AMERICA
PROFESSOR CLYDE W. VOTAW. Ph.D.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Education is that process of nurture, instruction, and discipline
which seeks to develop the character of the individual, and to fit him
for social service. In this larger conception of education, which is be-
coming standard through the thought and activities of educational
leaders, there is no difference between education and religious educa-
tion. The purpose of religious education is exactly that of education.
The phrase " rehgious education " is in use for the reason that we have
tolerated a conception of education which limited it to the area of in-
tellectual furnishing and discipline. The phrase is a protest against
this limitation. Education must include the religious and the moral
elements which are involved in any true development of character and
preparation for social service. When the word " education " comes to
be commonly understood as thus inclusive, the phrase " rehgious edu-
cation " will have served its purpose and become obsolete.
For education is a unit. The education of the moral nature and the
education of the spiritual nature are not separable from the education of
the intellectual nature and the education of the physical nature. We have
recently come to see that the storing of the mind with useful information
should not be isolated from the training of the moral and spiritual
nature of the individual, and from the training of the body. It is not
only in religious circles, in churches, Sunday schools, and theological
seminaries, that this better idea must establish itself; in all the schools
of the land it is quite as important that it should prevail.
The fact seems to be that this idea of education has been recently
illuminated and pressed by educational rather than by rehgious leaders.
We certainly do not forget that the impulse to education came originally
from the church, and that the purpose of this intellectual furnishing
and training was to increase the abihty of the individual to promote
religious thought and life. The schools of America were originally
estabhshed as auxiUaries to the churches. The separation of the
schools from the churches has arisen within the past fifty years, partly
because of the divisions and controversies among the ecclesiastical or-
ganizations as to how the rehgious element should be presented in con-
nection with the common school work, and partly because many people
90
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN AMERICA 91
outside the churches were dissatisfied to have the particular theological
dogmas of the churches taught to their children.
After a period of fifty years, in which this separation has become
more definite and widespread, we are now called upon to consider
whether we really approve it. Do we wish to see this separation con-
tinue and grow until there is a complete divorce between the churches
and the schools ? Or has it already gone too far, so that we ought to
find a way to restore the original union of the intellectual with moral
and religious training? The present situation is easy to describe.
The sixteen million children who are attending our public schools, and
in them are receiving their intellectual equipment and discipline for
life, are, many of them, failing to receive the religious and moral equip-
ment and discipline to which they are quite as much entitled, and
without which they will become abnormal men and women. It is
true, our Sunday schools have a nominal attendance of some eleven
million pupils. If this large attendance were real instead of nominal,
if the work of the Sunday school were continued through as many
years of the child's life as the work qf the day school, if the time given
to the religious and moral instruction and discipline in the Sunday
school were equal in proportion to the time given to that of intellectual
furnishing and discipline, and if the quality of the Sunday-school work
were as good as the quality of the day school-work, eleven million
children out of sixteen million would be fairly well developed religiously
and morally. It is a fact known to all, that there is no such equation
in work between the Sunday school and the day school. The eleven
million children who are enrolled in the Sunday schools of America
attend irregularly, and for a fewer number of years than in the day
schools; the instruction which they receive is largely by voluntary and
untrained teachers; the period of instruction is not more than an hour
each week at best; the methods of instruction often lack pedagogical
wisdom and fullness of knowledge; and the studies pursued are often
conducted upon a desultory, defective plan. The religious and moral
education which the children of America receive is therefore inadequate
in quality and amount, entirely inadequate.
The present agencies for religion and morality, even if their ideal
were the best, their vision of the opportunity perfectly clear, their
energy unlimited, and their methods perfect, could not accomplish the
work which now requires to be done.
The'^question arises. Can any larger part of this essential religious
and moral education be accomplished in the day schools ? Our public
schools are not indifferent to religion and morality. While no pro-
92 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
vision is made in them for specific religious instruction, and almost no
provision is made for specific moral instruction, the spirit and the at-
mosphere of our schools are generally dominated by true religion and
morality. The teachers in the schools are nearly always persons of
religious spirit and moral character; their influence upon the children
in the schools is religious and moral to a high degree. In the great
majority of schools of our country the Bible is regularly read; in a
number of states it is required to be read, and in only a few states by
recent legal action has its use in the schoolroom been forbidden.
But the Biblical history and the Biblical literature should find a
place in the regular instruction of our public schools, at the proper
stages in the elementary, secondary, and college grades, side by side
with the history, literature, and ideas of the Greeks, the Romans, and
the English. Competent teachers to give this instruction should be
provided. It is now assumed that this knowledge will be gained in
the home, in the Sunday school, and in the church. To be sure, children
who have homes where the Bible is taught, and who attend Sunday
school and church regularly and attentively for years, will acquire
some knowledge of the Bible. What proportion of the children grow
up under such conditions ? The Sunday school strives to give a knowl-
edge of the Biblical history and literature, for this task is specifically
assigned to it. But its real work is to develop the religious and moral
character of the child. The Sunday school rightly makes use of the
Hebrew and Christian Scriptures in its teaching of religion and morality.
But Sunday-school teachers seldom discriminate between facts of the
past and the religious teaching associated in the Bible with them. It
is the religious and moral training which the Sunday school seeks, not
the exact facts of antiquity.
To have the Bible taught in the public schools as history and litera-
ture would be to give the Book its rightful place from an intellectual
and academic standpoint. Indirectly, also, it would allow the Bible to
exert to some extent its strong religious and moral influence upon the
student. But is that enough ? Or should we have that strong religious
and moral influence brought directly and intentionally to bear upon
the children in our schools ? They need the assistance of its ideas and
its inspiration; are they not entitled to them? Shall we not provide
in our schools specific religious and moral training to make our children
true, capable men and women? In the schools of Greater New York
wise provision has been made for moral training, not by way of text-
book instruction, but by way of moral ideal, influence and discipline.
In other places, specific moral instruction is made a regular part of the
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN AMERICA 93
course. In the Chicago schools, and elsewhere generally, careful
instruction is given the children regarding the bad physical and moral
effects of alcoholic liquors and tobacco. There is no objection offered
to ethical training, scarce any to concrete ethical instruction, in the
public schools. One of the most important steps forward in general
education is this present movement to make the schools an ethical
force.
The way is not quite so clear, nor the steps so easy, by which our schools
shall also become a religious force, founding this ethical training where
alone it can stand, on the religious instincts of man. But this should
be done. Morality finds its only adequate imperative in religion.
The sense of duty to be and to do right, the supreme aim of life, the
motive to live, the emotions to love and self-sacrifice, the enthusiasm
for brotherliness, the faith one has in the universe, the hope for the fu-
ture — all these things constitute the religious elements in men. Life
gets its meaning, its impulse, and its joy from them. Now, these vital
elements of being cannot be ignored and left undeveloped in the edu-
cation of the child without producing abnormality; he will lack that
foundation for character, and impulse to social service, which are
essential to true manhood and useful citizenship.
Religious instruction and training must also be adequately provided
in our public schools, as an integral part of general education. For
(i) if this is not done, millions of children will be continually passing
through our schools, who, because they receive it neither in the home
nor in the Sunday school, will obtain no religious and moral training
from the beginning to the end of their course of education. It is a
serious thing for us to graduate each year from our public schools a
million children who have little or no religious and moral foundation
to their lives. Many think that we are witnessing the inevitable result
of this neglect in the prevalence of disregard for law, crime, the pas-
sion for material wealth, lack of self-restraint, the violation of human
rights. And (2) adequate religious and moral training should be
given in the public schools because the educational process is a unit.
The several elements of it cannot be effectively given in isolation. Even
if the home and the Sunday school did their part perfectly, it would still
remain true that the religious and moral elements must be interwoven
daily with the intellectual elements, or, to use a different figure, the
whole intellectual furnishing and discipline should be transfused with
religious and moral meaning, aim, and power.
Now, what should be done can be done. Certainly, misconceptions
and prejudices almost without number would have to be overcome;
94 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
but is it anything other than misconception and prejudice which stands
in the way of doing this? So long as the view prevailed that religion
consists in theological dogmas and in formidable creeds of intellectual
beliefs, religion has been properly regarded as foreign to the work of
the public schools. But we have passed through that stage and reached
the better one, where we see religion and morality to be vital forces
in our lives, essential to true character and social service, an integral
part of education, and unobjectionable to all except those who are
without a high and serious view of life. Few would wish to see a
theological catechism introduced into the schools. Few would wish
to see the particular denominational tenets, over which the churches
have fought, introduced into the public schools. Few would wish to
see the controversies between Roman Catholics and Protestants re-
vived in our schools. It is not controversial and speculative theology
that one has in mind in advocating a religious and moral element in
the public schools, but the genuine spirit of religion which gives a real
purpose to life, which points to a high mission for the individual, which
inculcates brotherly love and service, which develops high moral ideals
and standards of conduct, and which prepares the children to become
intelligent, sincere, and effective citizens of America.
A danger exists that religion shall come to be generally thought of
as an antiquated survival from the past, as an extravagant emotional-
ism, helpful only to the few who appreciate it; that the churches shall
be classified as social organizations of the wealthy or the educated;
and that morality shall come to be widely regarded as a matter of ex-
pedience, or a matter of business, regulated only by legal statutes. The
situation needs attention. Any fair reflection upon the way men think
and act reveals the tendency toward these views of religion and morality.
The secularist views, the commercial standards, the pursuit of material
wealth, and the devotion to temporal things, are indeed characteristic
of our age. It is an actual condition of things we face. The task is
a real one before us who believe in reHgion and morality, and who be-
lieve that religion and morality should furnish the standards of life in
all its aspects.
The radical change which during the past fifty years has come over
American life has brought in new conditions, with new moral problems
to solve. We have recently passed from the agricultural stage into the
industrial stage of national development. Fifty years ago cities were
few and small, communities lived in comparative isolation from each
other, country life was typical, agricultural pursuits were dominant,
people read little. Life was simple under these conditions. The
simple kind of religious and moral education which had been devel-
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN AMERICA 95
oped to meet these conditions was fairly effective. Now a transition
has taken place. We have become a manufacturing and commercial
nation. Our many great cities are crowded with people. Agriculture
is left to people from foreign countries, who have come to this land of
opportunity. Business is dominant, and on a vast, complex scale, due
to the rapid development of railway intercommunication, mail, tele-
graph, and telephone. Great national wealth has been developed,
and money is used with prodigality in every direction. The enormous
power of capital has been learned.
The reign of bribery and graft in national, state, and municipal
politics show how far we have drifted into commercialism; and still,
people are scarcely aware of the actual conditions of things. Have
not business morals and business ideals almost unconsciously become
standard among the majority? Many highly respectable business
men conform only to the legal test of what is right in business. The
Golden Rule, the spiritual reahties, the sacred rights of humanity, the
moral ends of life, are acknowledged (it may be) on Sunday, but are
found to be impracticable on week days. Many a man who would
like to act on strictly Christian principles seven days in the week suc-
cumbs to the way of the business world. One man alone, or even a
few men together, cannot change this current.
We must face squarely the present facts, and discover why things
are as they are. We must decide vv^hat our ideals should be, and then
set ourselves to the attainment of them. We do not, in America, lack
■for distinct and lofty religious and moral ideals; they are our heritage
from the past. But we do lack a real devotion, a real self-committal, to
them. We preach and proclaim them, but we do not achieve them.
We, too, like the Pharisees of the first century, and like the men of
every century, " leave justice, mercy, and faith undone " — not abso-
lutely, of course, but relatively. Our ideals are high, but practically
they seem unattainable. Therefore we need such religious and moral
education as shall give strength to our purpose, and guidance to our
efforts, for the ideal. The training of the young (which we call edu-
cation) must embody these ideals, must implant and nurture them,
that our children may become exponents of our best thought, and illus-
trations of our best conduct. What we ourselves are, America will be.
The citizens are the nation. Bribery, graft, economic slavery, luxu-
rious living, crime, professional dishonesty, can only exist where men
either practice these things themselves or tolerate them in others.
There is no way to efifect righteousness except for you, and me, and
the next man to be rigliteous. This is our work. We acknowledge
it. Will we do it ?
THE CO-ORDINATION OF AGENCIES WITHIN A RELI-
GIOUS COMMUNION
REV. WILLIAM C. BITTING, D.D.
PASTOR MT. MORRIS BAPTIST CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY
Among the more important problems of religious and moral edu-
cation is that of co-ordinating the agenies within a religious commu-
nion. Of its larger dimensions, affecting entire denominations on
national or sectional scales, we may not here treat. We confine ourselves
to a discussion of the problem as it relates to a local church, whether
in village or city. In spite of these narrow limits the wider aspects
of our topic will intrude, as will appear later. Even when so confined,
the task proposed is by no means simple. A double co-ordination
is necessary: (i) that of all the agencies within a local church; and
(2) the co-ordination of these with educational agencies outside the
church — those acting upon its growing constituency.
I. The co-ordination of the agencies within a local church, (i) A
Need. The experience of intelligent pastors confirms the verdict of
careful students of the present situation. All affirm in the strongest way
that there is a need for this co-ordination. In a local communion
there are available for religious education, homes, the public worship,
the Sunday school, societies for young people of different ages, clubs
for both sexes, and various other organizations. So soon as we seek
the purpose of these, we discover that most of them are designed for a
specific end, and a few, perhaps, have only some vague reason for
existence.
The noticeable absence of children from public worship; the great
difficulty felt by pastors in providing a church service that shall be
helpful alike to adults and children; the apparent indifference in homes
to the work of church agencies in the training of the young, or the
vagueness of ideal and weakness of method even where the sympathetic
spirit exists; the unconsciousness of any co-operative relation between
church organizations in those who are members of several of them,
and the tell-tale silence in public and private concerning complemental
functions for these agencies — are some of the irrefutable evidences of
the need of some close co-ordination of all energies that come under
church control. Independence in activity has produced not only
duplication of aim, with its inevitable confusion, but often the widest
difference of purpose. If the constituencies of these separate insti-
96
THE CO-ORDINATION OF RELIGIOUS AGENCIES 97
tutions, or their leaders, or even the pastors of most of the churches
in which they exist, were asked for a definite statement of the inter-
relations of these agencies, or of their specific and unique contributions
to a clean-cut ideal of rehgious education for the young, the very question
itself would be a surprise. The call for co-ordination comes not only
from this situation, but also from the faith that believes that it ought
not to be, and that it is possible to improve it.
(2) A Basis. We must strive to clarify this cloudy sense of rela-
tion between these agencies. Experience proves that the Sunday
school in recent times has been the chief contributor to the membership
of the church. We are not able to say that such contributions are
wholly the result of Sunday-school work, and we are now able to say
that our modern idea of its work is far from making such contributions
its highest function. The movements in this department are such as
to invite its co-ordination with other agencies. Hospitality to the
thought of such co-ordination is evident in the rapidly growing sen-
timent in favor of the grading of both scholars and lessons, so that
there shall be co-ordination of the truths to be taught with methods
of teaching them, on the one hand, and of these with the stage of the pupil's
development, on the other. For a long time it has been recognized that
organizations for young people have provided both for impressions
b}' qualified leaders, and for self-expression by members. The newer
visions of what qualifies a leader, and of appropriate forms of self-
expression for different periods of life, make present conventionalities
obsolete, and open the way for genuine co-ordination of leader with
members, and of members with their activities. Honesty compels due
recognition of these evolutions in Sunday school and society life. Even
undefined desire for co-ordination is part of the opportunity for any
effort that may be made to improve conditions, and we shall find far
more receptivity to intelligent suggestion than some of us anticipate.
A few pastors have brooded over the problem and attempted to bring
order out of chaos. Their work is yet in the experimental stage. No
one claims a solution. The number of these is not now so large as to
attract general attention, and we have no time for grateful allusion to
exceptional churches.
(3) Possibilities. The possibilities are attractive, but each is at-
tended by its corresponding limitation.
(a) A true idea of religious education may be made the inspiration
of every local church. Unfaithfulness to ideals has not been the fault
of those who have been most active in the agencies of which we are
thinking. Their zeal has ever been the chief capital of Christendom.
98 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Religion is what it is to-day, because of their earnestness. A truer
ideal is the chief need. Our workers will sustain a fresh and more
accurate conception with an enthusiasm even greater than they have
hitherto shovvm. This is the very first step toward co-ordination. The
conception for which this Council stands is now the possession of com-
paratively few. Popular ignorance of an adequate idea of religious
education is the call for its clear definition and aggressive proclamation
which we should answer with all our might. The general theme of this
convention, " The Aims of Religious Education," sharply outlined and
brought to every church, will help every agency within it to find its
special place, and, therefore, its relation to every other.
(b) It is possible to bring the local church to feel that, without
prejudice to other functions in a community, it is a school for religious
education. It ought to be easy to show that religious education, as we
conceive it, includes evangelism, and that the great purpose of life's
multiform activities is to bring every human being to self-realization
according to the norm in the mind of God. Church energy is con-
tributory to this, and every agency takes its appropriate place when this
idea is received. To quote from Professor Coe, " The Church as a
school needs to be systematized. All its work on behalf of the imma-
ture is, or should be, educational: it should proceed from the develop-
mental point of view. There should be a definite plan for the child
from his infancy to the close of adolescence. This implies, finally, the
organization of the church and the family into educational unity."
With such a conception dominating church activity no agency within it
will be permitted to travel the path of a wandering comet. Such co-
ordination would lead the child-life from its earliest beginnings in the
home, through a series of impressions and normal self-expressions in
church and other agencies, all the way to maturity. Steady advance
from one stage to another could be made without a break. The king-
dom of God would be within the soul what every realm of God without
is seen to be, a progress from blade to ear, and to the full grain in the
ear. Confession of religious Hfe would be not so much a formal as a
vital process. It would be the developing expression of the inborn
religious capacity in ways appropriate to each period of its growth.
(c) An inteUigent pastor will bend his efforts to this co-ordination.
The training of ministers in the conception and principles of religious
education ought to be required in every theological seminary. The
importance of this cannot be overemphasized. How can agencies
within a church be co-ordinated if the pastor is unequal to the task?
' Education in Religion and Morak. By Professor George A. Coe. Page 288.
THE CO-ORDINATIOi\ OF RELIGIOUS AGENCIES 99
If the course in the seminary cannot be lengthened to do this, let it be
so altered that the study of some of the antiquities can give way to
preparation for meeting existing conditions. Is it right to require a
knowledge of all the minute sects and insects of the past until students
can name every parasite that has grown upon the vine and its branches,
and leave the future pastors unprepared to cope with problems that
they will face immediately upon leaving the seminary? Let the dead
bury the dead, but let us be ready for to-day's battle. Such a training
would save our coming leaders from the embarrassments of ignorance
and experiment that now confuse us who are working out our own pas-
toral salvation. Yet we can study these conditions. What excuse is
there for absolute failure by any of us when we have so much literature
upon this subject, and our laboratories already prepared? If any
pastor would gather the parents of his parish, his Sunday-school officers
and teachers, the heads of the societies in his church, and his workers
into a class for the study of this problem of co-ordination, and with the
book from which I have quoted, or some such text-book, as a
basis, study the problem of co-ordination, he would at once make ex-
perimental realization, besides ennobling his work in many other respects.
These three possibilities are immediately practicable: the spreading
of the conception of religious education, the awakening of the church
nto the consciousness that it is a school for religious education, and
the efiforts of pastors qualified to lead in the work.
(4) Limitations. The limitations correspond to the possibilities,
and are of two kinds, the permanent and the transient. To the perma-
nent belong all those factors in the problem over which we have no con-
trol, such as the unique work of God, and the personal freedom of hu-
man beings. We turn to some limitations that can be removed, but
not without wise and persistent effort. And here the connection, of a
local church with denominational and interdenominational enterprises
must be taken into account. How is such co-ordination as is here con-
templated to be realized in the local church when powers outside of it
determine the activities of its agencies ? For instance, the lessons used
by most of our Sunday-schools are fixed by an interdenominational
committee, whose work is not controlled by the conception of religious
education assumed in this paper. Again, the topics for the meetings
of our young people's societies, both senior and junior, are selected
for them by general committees that foster the vmited societies. If we
were to introduce other illustrations of local church agencies controlled
by movements of a general character, the situation would appear still
more complicated. How far can these general interdenominational
loo THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
enterprises be enlisted in the effort to co-ordinate the local church agen-
cies? How near can denominations that control the activities of local
churches be brought to such a step as is here advocated? In highly
centralized forms of denominational government, ought it to be impos-
sible to secure a study of the problem here stated? And in loosely
organized congregational polities, should not the local churches feel per-
fectly free to co-ordinate their agencies without reference to outside
general movements? These questions need careful study. My pur-
pose is accomplished by indicating that some of the limitations of co-
ordination lie in the relation of the agencies within the local church to .
general denominational or interdenominational movements. Here,
also, let me repeat, the solution of our difficulties seems to lie in the
direction already indicated, the diffusion of the true idea of religious
education.
II. The co-ordination of agencies within a church with those in the
same community outside of it. Among these may be named the public
school, the library, the various clubs for boys and girls. All these shape
young life. If we may not bring the private and state schools to our
idea of religious education, we can adjust the agencies within the church
to these energies that lie outside. We can do this by pointing out to
the boys and girls the essentially moral value of their training in other
schools. We should make them see and feel that the use of opportunity,
neatness, promptness, honor, sincerity, and all the other traits of charac-
ter developed by the state school, are essentially religious. We must
bring them to see that the exercise of these in specifically religious realms
will yield even nobler results than they produce in the sphere of pure
intellectuality. We should make our methods in church agencies as
rational and self-commending to the boy and girl as are those of the
state school. The personality of the teacher, the genuineness of the
methods of study, ought to match those in the day school. The fact of
the unity of education makes our problem severe. All education has a
religious value, and all religion should have an educational value. Now
what happens to the student who belongs to both the week-day and
Sunday schools ? He compares equipment, the competence of teachers,
the methods of study, the results of methods, and grades them, indeed
degrades one or the other. We cannot expect him to co-ordinate the
two agencies. We must articulate them for him. We are bound by
every consideration that affects maturity to prevent impressions which,
though vague in the beginning, grow into clearness as the child grows,
and at last find expression in the false opinion, spoken or acted, that
religious education is one thing and general education is another and a
THE CO-ORDINATION OF RELIGIOUS AGENCIES loi
far superior thing. True educational methods in the use of our church
agencies will go far towards preventing this harmful mistake. The
neglect of such methods is largely responsible for the disparity of re-
sults in the two realms which the boy only feels at first, but at last
clearly defines to himself. Let us not neglect any opportunity com-
patible with the rights of all citizens to influence the instruction and
methods of the state schools. Surely, Christians have some rights
which they did not surrender when they made and guaranteed the re-
ligious freedom of their state institutions. Nevertheless, the chief
direction in which we must now look for the co-ordination here advo-
cated must be in the uplifting of the educational value of our church
agencies so that in this respect they will be recognized as not a whit be-
hind those of the state schools. That was a tremendous question lately
put to the writer by a college sophomore, who is thinking of entering the
ministry: " Can I take the whole of my selfhood with me into the min-
istry?" He was urged not to enter it otherwise. Investigation into
the origin of his question took us back into this very lack of co-ordination
of his church training with his other educational experiences. Said an-
other, a freshman, from a high-class preparatory school, with his first
conscious shock from the disparity of methods and results in these two
spheres: " I stand for the thing for which the church stands, but not
for all the methods by which the church stands for it." Is there no
way of saving our young men and women from such questions and con-
clusions? If there is, let us find it.
III. In conclusion, I would suggest that the Council of the Reli-
gious Education Association appoint a committee to investigate this en-
tire matter. A scientific study of the situation, an accurate description
of it, would surely arouse a widespread interest in improving it. No
more practical work could be undertaken at this time, none which
would more plainly justify the existence of the Association. Out of
such a study would grow suggestions of the most practical kind. Hun-
dreds of our most intelligent ministerial and lay workers face the prob-
lem daily, and long for some light upon it. Even where the problem
is not so sorely pressing there are dim misgivings as to the efficiency
of present prevailing methods. And yet more loud is the call to awaken
those who see no problem at all, whose satisfaction with present con-
ditions is the complaisance of folly.
WHAT CO-OPERATION IS NOW POSSIBLE IN RELIGIOUS
EDUCATION BETWEEN ROMAN CATHOLICS
AND PROTESTANTS?
VERY REV. PROFESSOR THOMAS J. SHAHAN, D.D., J.U.L.
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D. C.
I think I may say at once that some co-operation is possible in the
matter of rehgious education between Roman Catholics and Protestants.
The general sympathy which the proceedings of this Association awaken
among the former is a fair sign that we hold something in common,
ideally at least. A common aim presupposes and calls for some meas-
ure of co-operation, however circumscribed it may be, when we reach
the stage of execution. Co-operation, however, is a very broad term,
and it may be well to state at once, clearly and frankly, the field in
which it seems impossible to look for any mutual helpfulness between
Roman Catholics and Protestants. Religious education with Catho-
lics is something positive, systematic, and exclusive, in accordance
always with the doctrines and precepts of the church. For this reason,
it is impossible to establish any system of immediate co-operation in
religious education with those who cannot accept these doctrines and
precepts, or the authority of the Church by which they are maintained.
Experience has shown the futility of intermediate combinations made
up of concessions, or based on mutual minimizing and sacrifices. In
the matter of rehgious doctrine, everything is in one way or another
essential, or may be easily made to take on that character. We should
find it, therefore, impossible to construct manuals of religious doc-
trine that would satisfy both Catholic and Protestant parents and
authorities.
It does look, at first thought, as if we ought to be able to produce a
manual of morality that would express certain principles and criteria
of conduct that have long been looked on as our common inheritance,
either from the Jewish law or from immemorial Christian experience.
But right here we are confronted by some preliminary questions that
are vital, and that must be frankly answered before we can say what
ideas are to go into such a manual. What is the basis of morality?
What are its nature, scope, sources, sanction? Shall it be treated as
purely natural, or with reference to the supernatural character impressed
upon it by the Founder of Christianity? Is it something absolute, or
is it something temporary and shifting, adapted always to the actual
WHAT CO-OPERATION IS NOW POSSIBLE? 103
conditions of humanity ? Has it any reference to a hereafter, or shall
its imperative norms be based on the present life only, and on the dic-
tates of the philosophers of the day? Roman CathoHcs, of course, be-
lieve firmly that there is no viable morality without religion, i. e., with-
out doctrinal convictions and apart from the sanction and co-operation
of the Church. They could not accept as final and authoritative
hand-books of morality constructed in the sense and temper of Theism
or of an artificial and colorless Christianity, without a foundation in
facts, and therefore without influence over the hearts of man. I may
add that the large proportion of Hebrews in the public schools of our
great cities is making it daily more difficult to provide any manual
of religion and moraUty that shall satisfy the general Christian con-
science and not offend a people which does not accept, as such, any
principles of Christian belief or life.
The impossibility, of an immediate co-operation seems still greater
when we come to consider the Teacher. The teacher is the necessary
interpreter of all things taught, the very pivot of the school. Whatever
formulae of religion or moraUty we might, hypothetically, agree on,
would have to be explained and illustrated by the living voice of the
teacher. The differences of beUef would surely manifest themselves
here, and all the more plainly in proportion to the measure in which
the teacher lived out in his person the doctrines he had accepted. The
religion of the Catholic teacher is a highly authoritative religion,
whereas the Protestant teacher would be free to assert an absolute right
of individual assent to or dissent from any and all doctrinal elements
in the rehgious or moral teaching that was before him. The Catholic
teachers would practically interpret in a like sense the doctrines of
religion and morality, for they accept them from the visible and author-
itative Church, but there can be imagined no way by which Protestant
teachers would surely teach at all times an identical system of religion
and morality.
There is one other reason, perhaps not quite so insuperable, why an
immediate co-operation in religious education is impossible between
Catholics and Protestants. I refer to what may be called the school-
atmosphere. In our modern life, for many reasons, the school has
come to stand in loco parentis. For this and other reasons, we believe
that the entire school, in all its elements and workings, should exercise a
continuous influence of a religious and moral character. In the school
the child should imbibe, at all the pores of its spiritual being, the essen-
tials of religious conviction and moral strength. It should live in a kind
of aura that would subtly and unconsciously permeate all its faculties
I04 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
and impress upon them a certain bent and coloring that would pre-
dispose the child habitually toward the influences of religion and the
moral law. In a word, everything about the school should be calcu-
lated to evoke and confirm those natural but weak germs of religiosity
and ethical sentiments that are in the heart of every child, but only
too easily get crushed or crippled amid ruder contending forces. We
find in the public schools too marked and exclusive an attention to
the material and the temporal interests of life, the purely transitory
and inferior elements of education. We are still very un-Rousseau-like
in our views of early mental formation, and believe yet that the child
cannot be trained like the lower animals, that it has predispositions of
many kinds, and that inherited traditions, ancestral religious fidelity,
the venerable Zucht und Sitte of centuries, are valuable helps in the
positive and negative manipulation of the child-mind. I might add
that as the religious sense and the moral temperament grow gradually
in the child, and as we hold both intimately connected with the positive
teachings and the historical experience of Catholicism, we deem it of
utmost importance to familiarize the child from infancy with the in-
stitutions and life of the Church, with her models of conduct and faith
and with her wise views and appreciations of many things that have a
bearing on religion and morality.
II. But if an immediate co-operation be impossible in the matter
of religious education between Catholics and Protestants, is there no
form of mediate or less close co-operation that would be acceptable?
As a matter of fact, such a co-operation does exist in Germany and
Austria, in Ireland, and elsewhere. The schools are national and com-
mon, the pupils, Catholic and Protestant, attend the same scholastic
courses, and are taught by the same teachers, who are legally appointed
without regard to religious preference, and after fulfilment of all civil
requirements. But the religious instruction is furnished according to
the expressed wishes of the parents, by ministers of their faith, at fixed
hours, and all children are required to attend the instructions of their
own religious denomination. In some places, as at Frankfort, there
are occasionally two professors of history, so that in this important
matter the delicacy of the child's conscience need not be violated. I
mention these facts to show that in places where the political and social
contact of Catholics and Protestants has been and is very close, ways
have been found of co-operation for the common welfare in the matter
of religious and moral education. I know that our political conditions
differ profoundly from those of the Old World, and that compromises
can be offered and accepted and worked out there in good faith which
WHAT CO-OPERATION IS NOW POSSIBLE ' 105
would here meet with great difficulties. In all those delicate questions
that belong to the borderland between the Roman Catholic Church and
civil society, her supreme authority will always be found quite moderate
and conciliatory, bent on saving the essentials of Catholic interests, but
willing to go a long way in order to encourage and confirm national and
municipal concord and amity in all temporal matters.
III. I take it for granted, however, that in the present temper of
the great majority of our American people, we shall all have to go on as
we are going, thankful that there is nothing in our written constitutions
nor in the habits of our people to interfere with the natural and right-
ful liberty of the parent-citizen to educate his children as he sees fit,
without any interference from a doctrinaire bureaucracy. But even
amid these conditions I believe that much can be done in the sense of
co-operation in rehgious education, though it must necessarily be of
a remote and preparatory character.
We can all help, within our own lines, to bring about the universal
recognition that religion and morality are necessary elements of a proper
education; that they must be taught from early childhood, and that both
represent something positive and permanent, indispensable to the wel-
fare of individuals and states.
We can emphasize our many points of agreement among the broad
and fundamental considerations that confirm this general thesis of the
great need of scholastic reform in the sense of religious and moral edu-
cation.
We can habituate ourselves to recognize a common peril in a de-
Christianized American soul equipped, as man never was before, with all
the powers and opportunities that our mighty state has called forth and
developed, or rather has only begun to call forth and develop. The eyes
of humanity are fixed with a certain awe upon the American citizen
as upon one who in a certain sense holds the secret of the world's future.
Will he accept and teach the philosophy of Christ, or will he follow after
the refurbished secularism of the past, and prove unequal to the splendid
call that is ringing in his ears?
We can teach with more earnestness the common and traditional
Christian doctrines concerning God, the soul, the moral law, sin, moral
responsibiHty, prayer, divine providence, the divinity of Jesus Christ,
and the traditional character of the Scriptures. We can insist upon
the worth of a Christian discipline of character, even for the affairs of
this world, on the sacredness and seriousness of human life, on the
Christian constitution of the family, on the duties of parents, in general
and in detail, on the obhgation of a public worship and the Sunday rest.
io6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
We can instruct ourselves first, and then instruct others, on the true and
solid reasons why abortion, suicide, divorce, corrupt conduct in busi-
ness and politics, inordinate greed of wealth and distinction, personal
arrogance, and contempt of the poor and lowly, are wrong, and con-
ducive to the detriment of the state and society.
Finally, we can beseech the Holy Spirit to enlighten us all more and
more, to bring home to the multitude the evils of an education that tends
to forget or exclude God from His world, and to confirm human pride
in the false persuasion that man is himself the sole measure and end
of all things, that good and evil are really indifferent, and that the only
law of religion and morahty is an opportunism that borrows its criteria
and its motives from the actual phenomena of society, without any
concern for a future, a judgment, or a retribution.
THE BIBLE AND GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS IN THE
PHILIPPINES
REV. SIMEON GILBERT, D.D.
FORMER EDITOR THE ADVANCE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Is the Bible, in some form, either as a whole, or in some appropriately
chosen body of Bible Selections, taken from both Old Testament and
New, needed in the new system of pubUc schools in the Philippines, in
order to the creation of a duly intelligent, moral, freedom-loving, law-
abiding, trustworthy native citizenship? In considering this question,
it is necessary to note carefully and put together a number of facts,
among which are the following:
There is, of course, no one who does not feel that in our vast new
possessions in the Philippines we face a tremendous proposition, and
no easy task; the definite aim being nothing less than to make over and
to make, among the millions of native peoples there, under the one
American flag, a new nation.
The meaning of the "white man's burden " we are certain to realize
more and more. Clearly enough, there will be necessity for bringing
into use the most elemental and potential means and agencies that can
make for personal character and civic manhood. The political experi-
mentation and exploitation, the past four hundred years, ought to prove
convincingly instructive, showing not more what to do, than what not
to do.
To begin with, there is, of course, no question about the principle of
the entire separation of church and state. That, happily, is fundamental
to the American government. And we shall stand by it wherever the
flag goes. This means freedom, protection, no special privilege, and
equal chance for all. But this distinctive American principle is not a
bugbear to frighten us out of our common sense, or a bugaboo to make
us silly.
The German state poUcy, that whatever we would have appear in
the state must first be put into the school, is exactly as pertment in the
Philippines as it has been in Germany itself, or in America.
But as to the school, — of what sort must it be ? To build the hope
of any real regeneration of such a people on a basis of mere intellectual
sharpening, ignoring the higher relationships of the human soul, and the
moral imperative of spiritual ideals, would be equally short-sighted and
futile.
107
io8 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Then, children, over there exactly the same as here, have, as children
and youth, certain natural and inalienable rights 0} their own; rights
which ought to command respect. Primarily, there is the right to be
educated, and, in order to do this, the right to have the fittest and best
educational means and appliances that are, in the circumstances, possi-
ble, and especially so just at that period in life when their whole nature
is peculiarly open and responsive. In this, if not new, yet newly
acknowledged, " bill of rights " for childhood, there lie the best hopes
for the future.
Now, there is one Book, which is the common book of all the Chris-
tian nations; confessedly the world's supreme classic; the master-light
of all our advancing civilization. It cannot, therefore, be otherwise
than that such a book must possess an altogether imique educational
value. It must be that childhood and youth, in the matter of their
elementary discipline and training for life and for citizenship, have a
clear right to freedom in the use of such a book. And just now, as it
seems to me, this natural right of childhood is one that needs to be more
adequately enforced. Moreover, the appropriate use of it, in some form
or other, by the agencies of the national government in its comprehen-
sive educational enterprise, for its own sake, is also a right too plain to
need argument.
Nor would this imply any " establishment of a religion," any more
than did the immortal ordinance of 1787, which put "hberty, religion,
and education " at the basis forever of the Northwest Territory; or
than does the fact that the President of the United States takes his oath
of ofl&ce with his hand, if not also his lips, on the Bible; or that Congress
is each day opened with prayer; or that Thanksgiving Proclamations
are each year issued by the President and by the governors of the
several states. For the civil authorities to do anything toward the
establishment of "a" religion is not at all the same thing that it is for
the state to favor and foster that which lies at the common basis of all
forms of religion.
In this newly acknowledged " hill of rights " for childhood, every-
where, the Bible should have its own place as the world's supreme classic,
the one book that is common to all Christendom, and has hitherto been
found to be the most vital and dynamic agency, the most illuminating
guide, in respect to whatever is best in our modern, especially our Ameri-
can, civilization.
For the government, in this enormous educational undertaking, to
neglect and ignore this supremely efficient educational force, having the
plain right to use it, would be like leaving some strategic point of national
THE BIBLE AND GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS 109
defense in war-time unprotected and exposed to the enemy. So, also,
for a modem Christian nation to appear to be either afraid of, or afraid
to use, the common book of all the Christian world, would not be to the
credit either of its wisdom or its dignity.
To exclude such a book, the common book of all Christian nations,
from the scheme of popular education, because deemed too high and fine
and good a book for childhood and youth, in the bright and formative
heyday of their educational development, would seem to be little better
than cruel trifling. As Horace Bushnell used to say, " The Heavenly
Father knew how to make a book for His own children." If so, his
children have a right to freedom in its use; and, for just the same reason,
the government of a Christian nation has a right to authorize the use of
it, in some form, in its public schools.
Then, too, it is to be remembered that in this case, if the children
among these people do not get some acquaintance with this book in the
school, it is doubtful if they will get it anywhere.
Wherefore, the Bible — at any rate some suitably chosen body of
selections — is wanted in the schools, not as mere ancient history, nor as
mere moral teaching, nor as mere philosophy or science, nor as mere
literature, nor alone for its unique spiritual and ethical force in character-
making, but exactly for what it is, as the common and supreme book
of all Christian nations, and which has shown itself to have a power that
no other book, to anything like tbe same degree, possesses.
The proposition, then, which I very respectfully suggest to this
Council of the Religious Education Association is, whether it may not be
practicable, by proper conference and correspondence with certain most
eminent representatives in all the great church organizations, including,
of course, the Roman Catholic, to secure the appointment of some
highly and widely representative committee by whom some book of
selections from the Bible, Old Testament and New, may be made,
against which no reasonable objections could be urged, and which
may have provided for it, by the proper authorities, its own place as
an authorized school-reader in those schools.
Rightly undertaken, in a spirit of the broadest Christian fellowship
and American patriotism, would not reasonable men and women in all
parts of the country applaud such a movement? And would they not
instantly recognize the eminent fitness on the part of this-great Religious
Education Association in taking the initiative in a movement of such
far-reaching educational beneficence?
WHAT CAN UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES DO FOR
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THEIR STUDENTS?
PRESIDENT WILLIAM R. HARPER, Ph. D., D. D., LL. D.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Some propositions concerning the university and its responsibility
for religious education.
1. Just as in more recent years institutions of higher learning have
been willing to assume a larger responsibility for the physical education
of their students, so there seems to be a distinct awakening to the fact
that a responsibility exists also for the religious education, in some form
or other, of the students. This statement does not ignore the fact that
through all the years certain formal practices, like the chapel exercise,
have existed ostensibly for the purpose of rehgious education; but it
still remains true that in a new and larger sense institutions seem to
be recognizing their responsibility for rehgious education, whatever that
may represent.
2. This change of attitude is due in some measure (i) to the eleva-
tion of the study of Bibhcal hterature and history to the level, scientifi-
cally considered, of that of other history and literature; (2) to the work
which has in recent years been accomplished by eminent psychologists
along lines relating to rehgious life; (3) to the fact that in the more
recent development of the college curriculum many subjects relating
to all phases of modern life have been introduced, and that this has
made possible the introduction of subjects that have to do with the
religious phase of life.
3. It is strictly in accordance with the general purpose of the univer-
sity to take part in work that has to do with rehgious education, in-
asmuch as the departments of philology and literature, history and
sociology in the university, likewise the departments of science and
philosophy, ethics and psychology, cannot ignore the consideration of
those questions with which a sound religious education is concerned.
4. The university is confessedly the leader in the community which
it represents, in all hnes of intellectual inquiry. This must include the
subject of religious education, inasmuch as this particular subject be-
longs definitely and confessedly within this field.
5. The need of such intelligent consideration of subjects relating to
the religious hfe as a university or college only can furnish is clearly
seen (i) in the abnormal and distorted forms of religious life and
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF STUDENTS iii
thought which seem to attract large numbers; (2) in the ignorance or
disregard of the laws of religious life, which results in the giving up, for
all practical purposes, of a religious life by many persons; (3) in the
apparent contempt in which many people of the more intelligent class
hold the lower manifestations of the religious life because of ignorance
of the relations of this lower hfe to the higher; and (4) in the narrow
conceptions of religious subjects which prevail, even where men and
women in other matters of life and thought exhibit the highest intel-
ligence.
6. Inasmuch as the theological seminaries of the country have not
been intended to serve as laboratories for the working out of problems,
but as training schools for the instruction of skilful propagandists, it
devolves upon the university to undertake work of this kind. The
problems of life in general are worked out more largely in the university
or college than anywhere else, and institutions of higher learning have
come to be regarded as leaders in the work of solving problems in the
various realms of life.
7. The university should offer facihties for investigation of the many
phases of the religious life and of the many questions which form a
part of the rehgious education, (i) because, as a matter of fact, a large
part of the fundamental work necessary for these investigations is already
established in the university, and it is a question whether such investi-
gations can be made to any considerable advantage outside of the uni-
versity; (2) moreover, there exists in the university the spirit of research
without which any efifort of this kind will be unsuccessful. It is only in
the friendly environment that an investigation is likely to be prosecuted.
It is for the best interests of religious education, therefore, that the
university should undertake those pieces of investigation which will
place in a newer and truer light the fundamental principles of education
as they are applied to the religious field.
8. For the sake of the university itself, such work should be under-
taken, since the questions of this field are inseparably connected with
those of philosophy and psychology, history and sociology, English and
modem literature, while the problems of the great fields of science in
every case resolve themselves finally into questions which are more or
less closely connected with this all-comprehensive subject. It is im-
practicable to separate religious thought and religious life from these
various fields of inquiry.
9. The study of these problems by the university will lead to three
practical results: (i) The subject of religious education, and indeed the
subject of religion itself, will be elevated and dignified in the minds of
112 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
the great body of people by whom perhaps the claims of religion have
not hitherto been strongly felt; (2) a larger respect and appreciation will
be accorded these subjects by students as well as by people at large, be-
cause the problems are problems on which learned and scientific men
are at work. An influence will be set at work to counteract the
marked tendency toward degradation of that which religion represents,
on the ground that the religious feeling is something peculiar to women
and weak men. The need of such a counteracting influence cannot be
denied.
10. The university may likewise offer instruction in those subjects
which shall contribute to a better conception of religious education.
Following out this policy, (i) it may encourage schools preparing stu-
dents for college to provide the opportunity of making preparation in
the subject of Biblical Hterature and history; (2) it may introduce into
the curriculum courses of instruction adapted to the different classes of
students, — courses, for example, for undergraduates who would choose
this subject as they would any other subject, for the sake of a liberal
education; courses for graduate students who are preparing themselves
to teach in one or another of the departments concerned. It is worth
while to consider, also, whether the German educational usage in the
matter of religion, while not successful in all particulars, has in it an
element of value, for no one can doubt that great good has been accom-
plished by this plan, and, that the sturdiness and strength of German
character to-day are in some measure to be attributed to this important
factor in the education of the German youth.
11. The duty of the university will not be performed unless it make
provision for religious education on the practical side. To this end, the
university should constitute itself a laboratory in which there should be
a working place for every member of the institution. Religion is a life,
an atmosphere, and the test of the theory propounded in the various
courses of instruction will be made only in case such a laboratory is rec-
ognized as in existence, and the facilities for work in that laboratory
are properly provided. The university is itself a life and an atmosphere,
and this life, if it is a full and complete one, must include the religious
..element. In this proposed laboratory, practical work should be con-
ducted — work which in itself will give occupation of the kind required
by those who take advantage of its facilities; work, also, from which,
perhaps, new truth, or new relations of old truth, may be discovered.
12. In connection with this laboratory, the university should fur-
nish opportunity for continuing the religious life begun at home by
those who have changed their residence to the university community.
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF STUDENTS 113
It is a dangerous mistake for men and women entering upon univer-
sity life to feel that they may for a period throw aside the restraints
and the duties of their former life. With the intellectual growth and
maturity which the college life brings, there should be a corresponding
religious growth, but this will not be obtained if one deliberately re-
moves himself from all the agencies of religious influence. It must be
remembered that the religious thought and spirit of the earlier stage
of intellectual development will not suit a later stage, and, being in-
sufficient, will be altogether discarded. The responsibility of the uni-
versity in this particular is all the more grave because the home is far
away, while the church no longer exerts its influence as before.
13. The university in its laboratory of practical religion should en-
courage the development of the altruistic spirit, for this is an essential
part of the religious spirit. The life of the student, as also of the in-
structor, is confessedly a selfish life. The best corrective is to do some-
thing for others. The opportunity presents itself in settlement work
and in a thousand other ways.
14. The university should take definite steps to protect its con-
stituency against those common forms of vice and demoralization
which prevail. The dangers of temptation in a large institution and in the
city are, upon the whole, no greater than'in the small institutions and in
the country. The counteracting influences are stronger and more nu-
merous. The university must hold up true ideals of life. It can point
out the consequences of the violation of nature's laws. It can provide
proper forms of recreation and a proper atmosphere for recreation.
It can exercise, through its staff of officers, a strong personal influence
upon those who have intrusted themselves to its care. It can purge
its membership, whether in the case of students or of officers, of that
element which, by example, or by direct influence, is deteriorating
and inferior. It can place itself uncompromisingly on the side of all
that is good, and just as uncompromisingly against all that is bad and
debasing. All this it must do, and more, if it is to serve conscientiously
the interests of those who are within its walls.
MR. ROY SMITH WALLACE
GRADUATE SECRETARY OF THE PHILLIPS BROOKS HOUSE ASSOCIATION HARVARD
UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
The Phillips Brooks House at Harvard University, Cambridge, is
the headquarters of four distinctively religious societies, one co-operative
executive Social Service Committee, and one large, all-inclusive holding
corporation.
114 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
The Phillips Brooks House Association was organized " to unite
members of Harvard University, who are interested in the religious,
philanthropic, or other activities which center in the Phillips Brooks
House. Its work is so ordered that the work of the individual organi-
zations now active in the Phillips Brooks House are not in any way
restricted or interfered with." The membership of this society is com-
posed of the memberships of the various constituent religious societies
and of other men, who, while they are willing to stand for the activities
of the Phillips Brooks House, are not willing to commit themselves to
the point of view of any one of the local societies.
This Phillips Brooks House Association carries on all the activities,
the results of which are of equal service to all the societies. For in-
stance, it maintains the Freshman Information Bureau, holds the fresh-
man reception, and conducts the Fall Conference. Besides this, as
soon as college opens, the Association canvasses actively the freshman
class in the interest of all the societies and of all the activities which
center in the Phillips Brooks House.
The Association itself carries on directly all the general activities.
It stimulates the other societies to carry on their work efficiently, by
holding them definitely responsible for conducting those enterprises
which they set for themselves as to the work of these local constituent so-
cieties. First, we have a Catholic Club, which exists to care for the in-
terests of the Roman Catholic members of the University, and to increase
the good will which already exists between Catholics and non-Catholic
members of the University. This society holds fortnightly doctrinal
conferences, which are for Catholic and non-Catholics alike, and social
smokers addressed by prominent lay Catholics for the benefit of the
members of the society. Second, we have a religious union, the pur-
pose of which is to bring together men of liberal religious thought for
the discussion and expression of the religious life. This organization
holds meetings fortnightly, alternate meetings being addressed by out-
side speakers. Third, an Episcopalian Society, the St. Paul's Society,
the purpose of which is to bring Churchmen of the University into ac-
quaintance with each other, and afford them opportunities for work
and worship agreeable to the spirit and forms of the Protestant Episco-
pal Church. This society provides corporate communion for its mem-
bers, weekly evening prayer, interests itself in the foreign missions of
the Church and endeavors to provide workers in neighboring Episco-
palian parishes.
The Harvard Christian Association is affiliated with the International
Y.^M.'^C. A., and carries on most of the work which this organization
lays down for its college associations.
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF STUDENTS 115
The religious meetings are arranged by classes and have a very
small attendance. Several times during the year, however, the Asso-
ciation arranges for outside speakers for Sunday afternoons. It also
send college men to various preparatory schools and city Christian
associations to make addresses. The City Work Committee charges
itself with supplying workers for a number of philanthropic institu-
tions. In its philanthropic work the Association provides a course
for the study and discussion of city problems, conducted by the resident
workers of the South End House, Boston.
Discussion
PRESroENT HENRY CHURCHILL KING, DD.
OBERLIN COLLEGE, OBERLIN, OHIO
The first requisite of all, which, if fulfilled, will take the place of al-
most all else, is genuinely religious men and women in the entire teach-
ing and official force of the college or university. Nothing will take
the place of this essential. Such men are sure to determine the atmos-
phere and spirit of the institution. The unconscious influence of their
association is always at work. And, on the other hand, the most elab-
orate arrangements for religious instruction, without the backing of such
lives, will count for very little. Nothing so certainly brings about the
deterioration of an institution as carelessness in the selection of its
teachers. A few compromising appointments may easily make im-
possible the maintenance of the institution's highest ideals or best tra-
ditions. The spirit of a college or university cannot go down in its
buildings or grounds or forms of organization.
Hardly less important is the prevailing spirit of the students them-
selves. The democratic spirit of a true college or university itself goes
far toward moral and religious training. The power of the college
life to bring out unselfish friendships, too, is invaluable. And the per-
sonal association with fellow -students of high faith and character is of
the greatest moment.
The presence of such a student body depends upon the general
traditions and constituency and atmosphere of an institution and the
moral and religious strength and efficiency of its faculty. It takes time
to build up the most powerful influence in this matter of the general
spirit of a college or university. Much will depend, in the first place,
on the spirit and determination of the president alone.
The moral and religious life requires, too, some active expression.
To this end, student activities in this direction should be heartily en-
ii6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
couraged and co-operated with. The reHgious Hfe cannot be simply
laid on from above. Every bit of initiative on the part of the students
is, therefore, clear gain. The college life, in the nature of the case, is
likely to suffer from some degree of self -absorption, and any line of
activity that tends to thoughtfulness and work for others deserves to be
earnestly furthered.
There must be, also, the most careful respect for their own moral
initiative and individuality, for the inviolability of their own inner life.
We cannot ruthlessly interfere or compel. We succeed only so far as
we bring them into the right spirit of their own choice.
Direct instruction has also a real contribution to make, though it
cannot be the main dependence. There is no reason why the Bible
should not be studied frankly as a moral and religious book, and not
merely as literature. It is literature; but its importance does not lie
primarily here; and there is only loss in pretending it does. Objective
historical study there should be, no doubt; but indirection is no gain.
It ought also to be made much more plain than is usually the case
that the ordinary philosophical courses in our colleges and universities
restrict themselves (legitimately enough) in their data — quite setting
aside the facts of revealed religion, of such a line of personalities, for ex-
ample, as the prophets, culminating in Christ. Their resulting infer-
ences, consequently, are of limited appHcation. The results of the phil-
osophical inquiry as usually conducted, therefore, will come con-
siderably short of inferences that might be rationally drawn, if all the
data were taken into accont, including these greatest personalities of
history. It should also be noted that it is always difficult for philoso-
phy, as prevailingly intellectual, to do full justice to those aspects of
Hfe which do not lend themselves easily to intellectual formulation.
AN EXPERIMENT IN RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN A
COLLEGE
PRESIDENT W. D. HYDE, D.D., LL.D.
BOWDOIN COLLEGE, BRUNSWICK, MAINE
By religious instruction I mean the direct presentation of religious
truth; not any one of the many approaches to it, or substitutes for it,
or evasions of it, like the Bible considered as literature, or church his-
tory as an aspect of universal history, or Christian ethics as a phase of
ethics in general.
Obviously, thei-e are difficulties in the way. It cannot be dogmatic.
An average class — for example, my own this year — includes the Congre-
gationalist and the Universalist, the Baptist and the Methodist, the
Episcopalian and the Unitarian, the Catholic and the Hebrew. All
come with views that deserve to be respected; principles which it is
the professor's duty not to destroy but to fulfil. What shall we do?
In place of theory, I will give you the result of an experiment I have
been trying, in one form or another, for some twenty years; a descrip-
tion of what my class has been doing for the past month. First, I drew
up a syllabus of twenty topics, covering the vital truths of religion,
as follows: i. The facts of the world, and the possible principles of
their interpretation. 2. The conception of God. 3. The historic
representations of God. 4. The presence of God in humanity. 5.
The literary expression of religion. 6. The institutional embodiment
of religion. 7. Religious aspiration and depression. 8. Justification
by aspiration. 9. The answer to prayer. 10. The authority of duty.
II. The inevitableness of sacrifice. 12. The nature of sin. 13. The
opportunity of repentance. 14. The assurance of forgiveness. 15.
Rewards and penalties. 16. The future of the world and the hope
of immortality. 17. Love as the universal solvent of social problems.
18. Evangelism. 19. The mission and the settlement. 20. Religious
education.
One or two of these topics were discussed informally in the class
each day. All sorts of objections, all kinds of questions, were invited
and considered. There was no disposition to dogmatize; no attempt to
be orthodox; no dragging in of extraneous considerations to give a
semblance of proof to otherwise incredible propositions.
At the conclusion of the course, each member of the class was re-
quired to write a thesis covering these twenty topics; expressing his own
"7
ii8 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
views. The test of excellence was to be, not the orthodoxy or heter-
odoxy of the views presented; but the rational unity, the logical co-
herence, with which the views, whatever they might be, were shown to
spring from and develop out of a central principle common to them
all.
The only theological difficulty I have ever encountered was three
or four years ago ; and that was entirely my own fault. In reply to a
question which involved a certain article, incorporated into the great
creeds of the church, and based on passages bound up in the New
Testament, which modern critical scholarship is finding it increasingly
hard to believe, I gave a negative answer in dogmatic and rhetorical
form. The Episcopal bishop of the diocese very properly protested
against such treatment of an article of the faith of his church. I promptly
presented my apology; and while I said that I could not either change,
or if questioned conceal, my view, I promised not to introduce the sub-
ject of my own accord; and in case it was brought up by others to
state both sides of the matter dispassionately and reverently; as, indeed,
I ought to have done in the first instance. As a matter of fact, the ques-
tion has not arisen since: and if it should, I am confident it could be
treated without giving offense to the most conservative. The deeper
grasp we gain on essentials, the more tolerant we become in both direc-
tions, toward those more conservative and those more Hberal than
ourselves, with respect to what they deem important and we do not.
What are the results of this experiment ? What may we reasonably
expect to be the outcome ? First, we shall get the greatest diversity on
non-essentials. The Catholic will be a Catholic still; the Unitarian
will be a Unitarian still. I doubt whether in twenty years of such in-
struction, any person has consciously and deliberately changed his
ecclesiastical relationships as the result of instruction and discussion
in the class-room. If they did, it would be evidence that as a public
institution we were not dealing fairly by the pupils intrusted to us.
From those communions which are most in earnest about religion, we
should receive no more students, if we were suspected of the attempt
to proselyte. For example, this year I received the following state-
ments of beUef in an essay on the Ideal Religion. " I believe that there
is a material and spiritual world created and ruled by God. He is
the Creator and all-powerful Ruler of the earth, and is one God in three
persons, known as the blessed Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
God is represented on earth by a visible head called the Pope, and is
present in the form of bread and wine, which represents his body and
blood in the sacrifice of the Mass" " If one dies in mortal sin, he is
AN EXPERIMENT IN RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 119
condemned to eternal punishment in hell. If one has lived a good life
in the eyes of God, he is rewarded by being admitted to the joys of
Heaven for eternity. Between the two is purgatory, where the soul
which is not yet worthy of Heaven must suffer until repentance enough
has been shown, when he is admitted to Heaven."
Inasmuch as the majority of our students come from evangelical
Protestant homes, the greater part of the theses took a middle ground
between these two extremes. The following extracts give the view of
the majority of the class.
" God is the one great purpose who stands under the facts of the
world, and gives them the reality they have: the common ground of
unity between nature and the mind of man; the bond and basis of in-
telligibihty between different minds; the supreme source and standard
or truth which has a ruling power over our minds. He is the unity of
the whole, the purpose which works in humanity for righteousness and
truth. His position is to the universe what the nation is to the citi-
zens. He includes all the thoughts and acts of finite persons in the
unity of his larger thought and will. He is the assertion of the common
well-being. He is the spirit which gives the ideal of conduct. He is
the unity and purpose which binds all things and thoughts together, and
makes them the object of our love.
" It is perfectly natural that our conception of God should have
some finite symbol or representation. Let us put into this conception all
we can conceive of righteousness, love, and truth, let us put into it
every trait of moral character, every quality of spiritual grace, and
.then search for the man whose life and principle has revealed these human
ideals. We find no other but Christ. No other character has lived
whose teaching and Kfe could stand such a test. He met all temptation
with the consciousness of the Father whose commandment he was to
obey as a filial duty in the assurance that it was right. He accepted
every duty and relationship of hfe as an apportunity to do the will of the
Father, and to bring men to the consciousness of their relationship to
God and their brotherhood with each other. Christ is all of the divine
nature and spirit that can be manifested in human form, and therefore
has the perfect right to be called the representative or Son of God.
By virtue of his moral and spiritual excellence he becomes the Mediator
between God and man; and if we are unable to see God in Christ, we
are not able to see him at all."
Some one may ask, " What is the use of spending three or four weeks
on these topics, if men come out with the same views as those with which
they started? " They are the same in verbal statement and ecclesi-
I20 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
astical label. But they are different in depth, and breadth, in scope and
charity. The Universalist is a deeper Universalist; the Episcopalian
is a more tolerant Episcopalian; the Methodist is a more rational Meth-
odist; the Congregationalist is a more spiritual Congregationalist, the
Hebrew is a more sympathetic Hebrew; the Catholic is a more ethical
Catholic for having discussed these great themes in an atmosphere of
earnestness and candor and reverence.
Underneath these diversities of view, they all partake of a common
spirit. That two radically different faiths should altogether fuse was
not to be expected. But all the Christians, widely as they differed on
many points, were practically united in the main spirit of our common
American Christianity. Any one of them who should live up to his pro-
fessed ideal of religion would be at once a worker with Christ for the
spiritual welfare of the world, and a partaker with him in the divine
life.
Two years ago we reduced these common points of spiritual affinity
to formal expression in a creed to which the entire class of sixty gave
assent; and while the creed thus composed was not as comprehensive
and explicit at certain points as one might wish, yet, if universally ac-
adopted and lived out, it would make this earth a heaven within a single
generation; which is perhaps as good a test of orthodoxy as any.
Man is by nature rehgious. Truth has an affinity for the human
mind. Whoever will trust implicitly in the intrinsic persuasiveness of
the truth and the inherent honesty of youth, and strive in candor and
reverence to bring together the truth of God and the mind and heart
of young men, will find that religious instruction is not only possible and
practicable in the midst of the greatest diversity of views; but also the
most interesting and profitable portion of the college curriculum. Some
of his students will believe more than he; some will believe less; all will
believe differently. But they are all sure to gain the great ends at which
religious instruction really aims : more reverence for their comrnon Heav-
enly Father, and more respect for each other, more loyalty to the Spirit of
Christ, more readiness to live pure lives and do good work in the world.
WHAT CAN MUSIC DO FOR THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF
STUDENTS ?
PROFESSOR H. C. MACDOUGALL, Mus.D.
WELLESLEY COLLEGE, WELLESLEY, MASSACHUSETTS
That music may have a substantial part in the enrichment of the re-
ligious life may seem an absurdity to some, a beautiful but impractica-
ble dream to others. Our ordinary notion of the art is that it is, to use
Spencer's phrase, " a striking constituent of the efflorescence of civiliza-
tion "; in certain strictly utilitarian aspects, the handmaid of religion;
or, more popularly, the language of the emotions.
This last characterization of music has been responsible for a re-
gretted misconception of its scope and usefulness. If music be the lan-
guage of the emotions, how is it that beyond simple exhilaration or
depression, music has no direct power? It cannot call forth anger,
love, hate, contempt, derision, care: these are outside music's realm.
A large part of the standard musical literature, particularly the classical
and pre-classical masterpieces, arouses no emotional excitement; on
the contrary, the mind is absorbed by pure contemplation, as if one were
looking at the Parthenon. Speaking philosophically, when moods or
emotions accompany music they seem to be accidental rather than es-
sential. Music is a self-subsistent art, working in its own material and
governed by its own laws; its relation to life should be estimated only
after a consideration of its essential nature and of the results of its
work.
What, then, may we say as to music's contribution to the full life?
Music tells us of Law and inferentially of the Lawgiver. Deep in math-
ematics lie its foundations. The mathematical, acoustical, and mu-
sical primacy of the octave and the perfect fifth are absolute. Na-
ture in the harmonic dlan, gives her orders as to chords, keys, and
modulations, and the composer disobeys them at his peril. Here is
the foundation of our whole tonal system , and on it rest, too, the laws
of musical form. Man is never nearer God than when, out of the im-
palpable things we call sound-waves, and in accordance with God's
laws, written in Nature, he makes an enduring overture or symphony.
The musician is not a creator. He is God's man, achieving only as he
is law-abiding. If Gllick exceeded Monteverde, and Wagner, Gliick,
it was only because law in the artist's vision was unfolded and, being
unfolded, obeyed. " Music ministers to the larger life by revealing in
122 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
fresh and entrancing forms some of the great laws of God; by conform-
ing ourselves unto law we attain unto liberty."
But music makes a contribution to the abundant life even more
striking, if not more significant, than the one just referred to: it gives
opportunity for self-expression. If law be thought of as repressive, op-
portunity is expressive. Of what is music expressive ? Happily, music
has not a word-definite message; it accepts oz^r interpretation and car-
ries our word, our hope, our prayer. Whether we take part in a hymn
or in an oratorio, or are some Ysaye or Melba, or only a humble listener,
still we can pour out our soul, can give voice to heart-hunger or to praise.
Because music deals with material dissociated with everything suggest-
ing the earth or that which is earthy, we may draw from it so much
that gives satisfaction to the soul. To the vast majority of His children,
God has mercifully given this opportunity of self-expression. Hand
in hand with self-expression goes self-development, and self-develop-
ment means the abundant life.
If we consider music's physiological power chiefly, it is pre-eminently
the art for youth, just as, if we consider it in its formal and reflective
aspects, it is the art for maturity. The music exemplifying the highest
artistic impulses, the sanest, wholesomest artistic life, is the only music
that will minister to the religious life of students; for it is that music,
above all other music, which is based on law, which carries with it ad-
miration and love for law, and is the best vehicle for self-expression.
The proper presentation by college students of the best music, or
" the full appreciation of the best music by them, involves,first, a serious
altitude towards the art, and second, a serious study of it. We are, I
am sure, impressed with the claims of music to thoughtful consideration
as an art having vital relations with the mental and spiritual life of a
great majority of our college students. In the educational world, signs
point to a careful study of the value of music in the highest education;
and this comes about, not simply because music is interesting or enjoy-
able, or because of its emotional power, but because of its ideal and sug-
gestive beauty, and because of its close relation with the intelligence and
with the fife of the soul.
What direct steps may be taken towards securing the helpful co-
operation of music in the religious life of the students ? I take it that
the center of the outward religious life of the student is the college chapel.
Granted the existence of the religious spirit, it must be continued and
nourished. If the college chapel be bare, unattractive; if the organ
be inadequate; if the organ be adequate and the organist not alive to
the privileges of his position, or incompetent for them; if the choir
WHAT CAN MUSIC DO FOR RELIGION? 123
serve perfunctorily; if the service, as a w^hole, or is dead or uninteresting
falls short of the highest excellence in any degree, — by so much are the
college authorities missing their privileges. To the chapel service
should the students confidently come for help. They should receive
what they need, and no pains are too great for architect, trustees, presi-
dent, organist, choir, and congregation to take.
Two of themost important elements of service-enrichment are the
organ and the choir. In the consideration of music's help in the stu-
dent's religious life, music must be subordinated to the end in view.
After the service has been mapped out, its unification accomplished ,
and the part lo be allotted to music determined, the manner in which
the latter is to be carried out becomes of much importance. The mod-
ern organ has become an expressive, flexible instrument, capable of an
immense range in power and color. The organist has a great oppor-
tunity. He must not abuse his opportunity by attracting attention to
himself, by obtruding his instrument, or by indulging in sentimentalism.
Discreetly used, his position is of great usefulness.
But while in the organ the student finds vicarious expression, in the
choir he may offer up directly to God his prayer and praise and adora-
tion. If the choir be devout in manner and musically effective, it cannot
fail, either, to carry with it the religious feeling of the congregation.
Let the college find a choir-master who can train a choir so that it shall
be reverent, flexible in its response to service needs, and joyous in its
work. This is a very difficult thing to manage, but if managed, it
pays a hundred-fold. A congregation can be led, melted, encouraged,
by a choir made up from the student body, when the finest professional
choir would leave them untouched.
To^put all this in a somewhat different way, the most gracious ser-
vice that music can render to the religious life in worship is the service
of carrying the climax reached in sermon, address, or prayer on and
higher. This music can do through hymn or anthem or organ. To
render this service with the least loss of power, there must be absolute
co-ordination in every respect between minister, choir, congregation,
and organist. An ideal? Yes, an ideal; a wise ideal; a practicable
ideal. Whatever the theme, however adequately or wisely presented,
music, if allowed to try, will take it up and carry it higher. In this
sense music begins where words leave off.
Whether we consider the direct liturgical bearings of music or its
e^sent'al nature, may we not conclude that it may help the religious
life of the student by aiding him in the expression of his aspirations and
by giving him a beautiful and forcible illustration of divine immanence
and divine law?
III. THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES
THE ANNUAL SURVEY OF WORK OF THEOLOGICAL
SEMINARIES
PRESIDENT WILLIAM DOUGLAS MACKENZIE, D.D.
HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
One is glad to find that several seminaries, which hitherto have not
insisted upon the college degree for entrance, have begun to do so.
Several report additions to their faculty. At Union Theological Semi-
nary they are adding a graduate chair of Theological Encyclopsedics
and Symbolics for men pursuing advance courses, a graduate chair
of preaching for " ministers who desire further training in this depart-
ment," an assistant has been added to the work of the Homiletic De-
partment, and a chair of AppHed Christianity has also been established.
New Brunswick Theological Seminary has added the teaching of cog-
nate languages in the Old Testament field, is making arrangements
with New York University with regard to studies for the doctor's de-
gree, and is also " steadily increasing facilities for the study of com-
parative religion." At Auburn a new chair has been established in
Apologetics and Theism, and the President wishes to arrange for the
teaching of religious pedagogy. Andover has added an instructor in
the History of Religion. At Oberlin the college degree is demanded
for entrance and " genuinely post-graduate work of a severe order is
now being done, involving the abandonment of the lecture system, and
the adoption of something like seminar work." Rochester has in-
troduced new requirements for admission, and now demands the college
degree, or ability to do the work of degree of B. D. Two new pro-
fessorships have been added, one for English Bible and one for assist-
ance in the work of New Testament interpretation. Rochester has,
moreover, adopted the elective system, adding the number of courses
under this head to the fixed curriculum. General Theological Semin-
ary of New York has also adopted the elective system in an experi-
mental manner, and is extending the seminar system of class-work.
An instructor in Ethics has been added to the faculty, and the Dean
reports that the library has been " substantially remade."
The Elective System. One cannot look over the catalogues of theo-
logical seminaries and the letters which have come from them without
remarking the steady spread of the elective system. Even seminaries
124
WORK OF THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 125
whose equipment is small are yet trying, by imposing additional class-
room labor upon their staff, to meet with the demand for this feature
in a theological curriculum. The old system recognized five main de-
partments of study: Old Testament, New Testament, Systematic The-
ology, Church History, and Homiletics. The characteristic of that
system was that the students could concentrate for prolonged periods
upon each discipline, > giving it full justice. The result was that men
went out masters in some real measure of the great instruments with
which investigation in every direction could afterwards be carried
on.
This modern demand has arisen everywhere from two main sources.
First, through the growth of investigation in the nineteenth century
there has been a great increase of departments and sub-departments
in the vast field of Christian scholarship. Subjects which seemed to be
unified in a simple fashion, fifty years ago, have been broken up and
their several portions have grown into independent fields of research
and systematic thought. Let me merely name to you the rise of the
science of comparative religion out of the extraordinary labors of in-
numerable scholars upon all the religions of the world. Out of this
science there has arisen a wider demand for a study of the philosophy
of religion, and the latter has brought problems in metaphysics in a
fresh way, and from a new quarter, into the field of theological investi-
gation. Christian ethics during the last fifty years became detached
definitely from d-ogmatics, and demands separate treatment, both in
method and in end. Closely connected with this there has arisen the
science of sociology. Yet again, out of the modern methods of psy-
chological investigation have arisen various efforts to understand the
nature and laws of religious experience. This threatens, under our
very eyes, to become a new department. On the practical side, we are
now familiar with the phrase " religious pedagogy," and are aware that
not only do many seminaries try to give it a subordinate place in their
scheme, but separate institutions have been created to give full train-
ing in the science and art of Christian education. One must only refer
to the greater breadth and depth which has been given to the older
fields of Old and New Testament scholarship by modern discoverers
in the field of Semitic languages and literature, and by the great exten-
sion of knowledge in the already vast field of early Christian history
and literature.
Second. We must note the more frank recognition which we all give
to the diversities of interests and gifts among students. Enthusiastic
teachers desire to help men to find out what they can do best, and in
126 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
what department they can work with most hope of making it a life inter-
est.
The dangers of the Elective System may be put in the following
manner: First, the danger of superficial work all round. This must
arise if the student goes forth with no one subject mastered, and there-
fore with no real mental discipline. Second, a danger of the opposite
kind, which arises when a student specializes too soon and confines his
hard work to a field which is too narrow. He may lay there the founda-
tion of a real life interest and within it become a scholar; but he will find
later that his favorite and only department is organically connected with
all others, and that he is unfitted to pass into them or receive their aid
from the fact that he neglected those classes which are necessary for
scholarship in these related portions of the whole system.
- If these be the dangers, by what methods can we obviate them ? I
will try to answer this question by referring to the plans adopted by sev-
eral of our best-known theological schools.
(i) In the first place, let me refer to the plan adopted by the Divinity
School of Harvard University. Here the utmost freedom of election is
allowed to all, excepting those who enter for the degree of B.D. From
these a total of fourteen courses in three years is demanded. Two of
these may be chosen from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. As to the
remainder, it is said, " Candidates for the degree are not allowed to
neglect entirely any one of the following departments : Old Testament,
New Testament, Church History, Theology, Homiletics."
(2) Another plan may be called the " Grouping System." Under
this the whole number of courses offered in the institution is divided
up under various heads, some being generally classed as required or
prescribed, and others as elective. Under each group, which practically
becomes a curriculum for the student choosing it, it is sought to secure
three ends. First, each student is compelled to do some work in all of
the main departments. Second, under each group subject a list of
courses is given, which belong to it or are most nearly connected with
it. These become prescribed for the particular student. Third, a
margin of hours is usually left, which each student can fill up from all
the other electives offered, with absolute freedom. In working out this
plan, each student must consider the professor in whose group he en-
rolls himself as his personal adviser in all matters concerning his course.
The professor is bound to take the special oversight over all students
in his group, keep as close to them as he can from one term to another,
and report on their progress to the faculty as a whole.
(3) Another and most interesting plan is that which is being carried
WORK 01 THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 127
out by Princeton Theological Seminary. First, Princeton offers a fixed
regular curriculum on the old lines, without electives, which leads to a
certificate of graduation at the end of three years. Second, a number
of what are called extra-curriculum courses are offered in each depart-
ment, and in certain fields outside the regular curriculum. From these
courses no student may choose more than four hours during each of his
three years of undergraduate study. These four hours do not seem to
count in any way towards his grade on graduation. It is most inter-
esting, and for the friends of the elective system most encouraging to
find that last year at Princeton there were no fewer than 157 entries
(counting the repetition of names) made by undergraduates for these
elective courses. Third, Princeton adds a fourth year of work, all of
which must be done to the extent of no less than twelve hours in the
extra curriculum courses. These courses are in the five regular depart-
ments, with Semitic philology added as a sixth department. The stu-
dent who comes up for a fourth year chooses one of these groups, and
in it he must spend at least two thirds of his time, the remaining one
third being left as elective. In addition, he has a thesis, and when the
thesis and examinations on his year's work are through, he receives the
degree of B. D. Under this arrangement last year, no fewer than nine-
teen men received their degree.
The Fourth Year. — The pressure of the elective system has thus
brought us face to face with the question whether the time has come
or theological seminaries to insist on a fourth year of study. The
great extension of the field of theological learning to which we have
alluded, as well as the example of medical schools which have pro-
longed their courses to four and even five years, have combined to
raise this question in many minds. Within the last five years another
movement has emphasized the problem for us. I refer to the tendency
of colleges and universities to admit studies preparative to a theological
course into the curriculum for the B.A. degree. Students who have
included in their arts course classes in Hebrew, Christian Ethics,
Apologetics, New Testament, Greek, Sociology, and perhaps Church
History, expect to receive credit for this work when they come to a
seminary, and sometimes wish to finish their theological course in two
instead of three years. The value of a fourth year need not be dis-
cussed.
Undoubtedly any seminary which took this step would have to be
content for a con^derable time with a small enrollment in its fourth
year. And yet here the experience of Princeton is most encouraging.
I find that this seminary, last year, had altogether 34 graduate students.
128 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Of these, no less than 23 had graduated from their respective seminaries
within the last five years.
Another important experiment is being made toward the establish-
ment of a fourth year by Union Theological Seminary, New York.
In this institution, also, the degree of B. D. is granted under two sepa-
rate conditions, (a) A man of exceptionally high standing may add to
his already very heavy classroom work additional courses, which must
include sixty in the Old Testament department, and thirty in the
New Testament department. In that department which a student
elects as his major, and in which his thesis must fall, he must do no
less than 180 hours of classroom work' besides that required for the
diploma, (b) A man who has, during the three years' course either
at Union, " or in some other approved institution," attained an average
grade of not less than 80 per cent, may enter upon a course some-
what similar to that of Princeton. He must do twelve hours of class-
room work a week, but he may take one sixth of his session's work
at Columbia or New York University. From him, also, a thesis is,
of course, required. In the catalogue for 1902-1903, Union reported
22 graduates students, some of whom were working practically on
the fourth year for the degree.
The Influence 0} Comparative Religion. — We are all aware of the
fierce controversy which has been raging in Germany over the influence of
the study of religion as a whole upon the theological departments in uni-
versities. On the one hand, we have men, with Troeltsch, perhaps,
as their protagonist, who maintain that all theological work must be
recast in the light of our modern view of the religions of the world and
of their relations to Christianity. For it is urged that we are now com-
pelled to study the Old Testament in all its aspects in direct connection
with Semitic religions, and to trace the influence upon Hebrew thought
of the religions of the peoples with whom they came in contact through-
out their history. Similarly, the New Testament is, we are told, being
re-read. The rise of its doctrines and its worship is explained in the
light, not only of Judaism, but of the thought and worship of the Hellenic
world. The idea of canonicity, it is urged, must have no place in the
construction of the curriculum for a theological school, any more than
in the individual scholar's investigation of primitive Christianity and the
religion of Israel. Old Testament introduction ought to widen out into
the religion of Israel. The Biblical theology of the Old Testament dis-
appears into the religion of the Hebrews and of the Jews. New Testa-
ment introduction gives place to the larger term, the literature of primi-
tive Christianity, and its theology passes into th^ dnrtrines of the several
WORK OF THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 129
teachers and circles of the first two centuries; and so on with the rest
of the departments. Even in Germany, however, the advocates of this
plan do not have it all their own way. Redoubtable champions have
appeared in Harnack, Reichle, and others. Reichle especially has
written with great intelligence and fervor on the subject.
In America we have not gone so far, but the question in this survey
is whether our theological schools have been at all profoundly moved
by interest in the science and history of religion.
Dr. Warren, late president of Boston University, taught Compara-
tive Religion in the Divinity School for thirty-five years. Chicago
Theological Seminary, I am inclined to believe, was the first seminary
in this country to make comparative religion a required subject for all
students; and it did this some seven or eight years ago. No less than
40 hours in the junior year were demanded of every student. A large
number of seminaries have given some small place to comparative
religion without having made it a compulsory study. But some have
gone further than that. At the Divinity School of Harvard the Phi-
losophy and History of Religion are dealt with mainly by a Professor
of the Old Testament Department. The students are invited to elect
from courses offered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the fol-
lowing are among the topics named: Science of Religion, The Reli-
gions of India, The Philosophical Systems of India, Germanic and
Celtic Religions, History of Babylonia and Assyria. Attention is also
directed to certain courses in Philosophy including Ethics, Metaphysics,
and the Philosophy of Nature.
In the Divinity School of the University of Chicago a reorganization
of the department of Systematic Theology is now being made, which,
it is quite evident, has been profoundly influenced by the religious-
history method. The department is to be worked under four main
divisions which are described as follows: i. Philosophical Theol-
ogy; 2. Scriptural Theology, " Systematic Theology drawing its data
exclusively from the Scriptures"; 3. Historical Theology, divided be-
tween the departments of Systematic Theology and Church History;
4. Comparative Theology, " in which the theological teachings of the
ethnic faiths will be compared with those of the Christian system."
This sub-department is to be divided iijto three sections, the first
treating of the Philosophy of Religion, the second of the Psychology
of Religion, and the third of the History and Theology of Religions.
At Hartford Theological Seminary, within the Department of Sys-
tematic Theology there are courses on the Philosophy of Religion and
on Introduction to the History of Religions, as well as a reading
I30 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
course in that history. In the Department of Philology and Exegesis
a place is found for the reading of Arabic, the study of the theology of
Islam, the history and methods of Mohammedanism, the history of the
attitude of Moslems towards the Christian and Jewish religions, and
for Christian missions in Egypt and Arabia. Work is also done, of
course, in Assyriology, and, in the history of Semitic religion in general,
especially in its relations to the history of Israel and early Christianity.
In the Mission Courses, instruction is offered in a large number of
languages.
At Union Theological Seminary there now exists a department en-
titled the " Philosophy and History of Religion," which is under the
charge of one professor. He offers courses in the Philosophy of Re-
ligion, Survey of the Ethnic Faiths, Introduction to the Study of the
Philosophy of Religion, Origin and Development of Religion, and
Christianity in the Light of the Development of Religion. In addi-
tion, many important courses are named in the catalogue which are
offered by Columbia University and New York University, respectively.
On the whole matter, perhaps you will allow me to make the fol-
lowing general observations : First, the only point at which, excepting
the case of th& University of Chicago, comparative religion has come
thoroughly into the theological curriculum, is through the study of
the Philosophy of Religion. Second, the only school which has attempted
to reorganize the substance of its course under the influence of re-
ligious history is the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, and
even there it is limited at present to the systematic department, and has
not extended so far as to obliterate the distinction between Old Testa-
ment and new Testament literature and the non-canonical literature of
those periods. Third, the influence of the religious-historical method
on the Biblical and historical departments of a divinity school can,
as yet, only appear in the classroom method of individual professors.
Fourth, it may be worth pointing out that at Hartford Theological
Seminary the inclusion of subjects connected with the History of Re-
ligions in the curriculum is associated, not exclusively, but largely,
with the effort to train men more thoroughly for the foreign mission
field. The aim is to give them some knowledge of the language with
which they must be employed in the future, and of the nature and
the history of the religion of that people among whom they hope to
preach the gospel of Christ. Fifth, — and that leads me to hazard
the prophecy that, in years to come, in this country, we may find two
types of a theological curriculum arising. Under the first we shall
find the cours.' oi study reorganized from a purely intellectu;; stand-
WORK OF THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 131
point. The History of Religions, including Christianity, will be
treated as in some sense co-ordinate. An effort will be made to de-
velop the philosophy underlying the whole vast religious life of man,
and the various departments will tend to rest upon an investigation of
the history of each religion and of its interrelations with the others.
It is not impossible that in America the first programme may be
adopted by some great school, which reflects the opinion of the group
of agitators in Germany, to whom I referred above. Under the other
type, theological schools will continue to be organized, not in relation
primarily to the universal fact of religion, but in relation to the
life and purpose of the Christian Church, not on the basis
of the ideal unity of all religious life, but on the basis of the abso-
lute nature of one religion, Christianity.
Discussion
PROFESSOR GEORGE E. HORR, D.D.
NEWTON THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION, NEWTON CENTER, MASSACHUSETTS
It may be pertinent to call attention to a fact which has not been
mentioned in this discussion. The reformed churches, which received
their impulse from Calvin — the Churches of France, of the Rhineland,
of Switzerland, Holland, and Scotland — almost without exception,
had a pastor and a teacher, or a ruling elder. The meeting-house of the
Salem (Massachusetts) Church, which is still standing, holds about thirty
persons, but the congregation that worshiped there had a pastor and a
teacher. In modern times we have departed from this wholesome prac-
tice. Our churches put all the burdens of preaching, teaching, and
administration upon one person. The differentiation of function is the
mark of evolutionary process, but we do not follow out that sound
principle in the ministry. The result is, that our churches are seeking
for the rare men who can do the most diverse things equally well, and
when they have found him, they proceed to kill him.
We need both classes of men in the ministry — the teaching or
preaching pastor, and the ruling or administrative pastor. The two
classes of officers need very different kinds of training. But the theo-
logical seminary is geared to the training of the preaching pastor. The
most necessary reform in the theological discipline of to-day is that the
seminaries train both sorts of men, and the most necessary reform in
the churches is that churches of any considerable size shall have at
least two pastors.
132 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Looking now at the work of theological seminaries, as at present
adjusted, tliree facts are worth noting.
I. The need of a spiritual quickening throughout our country.
Various causes are adduced to account for the fact that the young men
in our colleges are not making a choice of the ministry. But the under-
lying cause of the situation is that since 1858 America has not been
spiritually moved, so that the spiritual consciousness of the nation has
been aroused. I am not arguing for any revival that wastes itself in
emotionalism, but I do not see how any religious man can deny that
we need a profound reawakening of the spiritual consciousness of the
American people to eternal things. Most of the problems that confront
the religious world would be largely settled by a deep and general re-
awakening of the spiritual consciousness of the American people. There
would be no Sunday-evening-service problem, no vacant-seat problem
in the morning service, no city-evangelization problem, no theological-
seminary-support problem, no lack-of-students-for-the-ministry prob-
lem, if we could have such a spiritual quickening as that of which I
am speaking.
II. A second fact deserves attention. During this period of spiritual
dearth we have been passing through the most prodigious intellectual
revolution that the world has ever known. We can fix the date of it.
The decade 1870-1880 was momentous in the history of thought, in the
attitude of the civilized mind toward the universe. The Weltanschauung
was revolutionized. In affirming this I do not mean to insinuate, in
the slightest degree, whether or not I think that what is vaguely called
" the evolutionary hypothesis," can be verified or not. I simply point
out that in the period designated we came into a new psychological
climate, and the influence of that climate was felt not only in biology,
but in philosophy, history, sociology, pedagogy, Bibhcal interpretation,
and theology. It is impossible for men to look at things just as they
did previous to 1870, no matter what their individual convictions. At
the very least, they have to take account of fresh considerations and
answer new objections.
III. There is, however, one aspect in the situation that is bright
with light and full of promise, and that is the increasing intellectual
appreciation everywhere of the moral and spiritual content of the Per-
sonality of Jesus Christ. Probably no life of Jesus written before 1830
is worth reading, and few of the multitudes of biographies of Jesus that
have teemed from the press since i860 are destitute of worthy spiritual
suggestion. When we come to think of it, the just implications of such
facts are astounding. There is seen to be a wealth and a power of
WORK OF THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 133
spiritual life in Jesus that we have not begun to exhaust. Theology
is surely coming to its own again as the queen of the sciences, because
she is discovering her true center and inspiration — the sovereign fact
which reconciles the old conviction and the new outlook. The moral
and spiritual awakening for which we all long, which will fill our semi-
naries with eager and heroic spirits, will surely come as the intellectual
convictions of the best modern thought set on fire the emotions and
will of multitudes of men. And the breath of the Spirit may accomp-
lish that at any moment.
PROFESSOR ALFRED WILLIAMS ANTHONY, D.D.
COBB DIVINITY SCHOOL, LEWISTON, MAINE
The seminaries may be known and the value of their work tested
in four ways: (i) Through their published catalogues; (2) by descriptive
statements made by president, dean, or professor; (3) through the per-
sonnel of the teaching staff; and (4) by the students who graduate.
Ministers may be classified under four types: the scholar, the
preacher, the pastor, and the administrator. The scholarly type has
been the product aimed at in the seminary course, until within a quarter
of a century; the aim has been gradually shifting to the fourth, or the
the administrative, type. The combination of the four into one is a
rare creation, and consequently truly great men in the ministry are few,
as are such men everywhere.
Recognizing that seminaries have the distinctive function of pre-
paring men for the ministry, acknowledging that they have made great
advances in variety of subjects taught, in the methods of instruction,
and in their spirit and readiness of adaptation to changed conditions,
yet there appear certain respects in which the curriculum of the semi-
naries falls short, in which their work proves defective.
Cultivation of the emotional nature should be provided. Even so
cold and intellectual a philosopher as Herbert Spencer insisted that
education, to be complete, must include the emotions. No psychology
to-day leaves out the feelings, no school of pedagogy forgets the appeal
to the imagination. Beyond the curriculum laid down in the catalogue,
there should be a depth of devotion, fervency of feeling, and warmth of
love surcharging all the exercises of a seminary, else its instruction
becomes cold and formal. It is the crying need of the theological semi-
nary, of the waiting Church, and of the heavily laden world, that,
in addition to all their scholarship, and there is none too much, in ad-
dition to their oratory and eloquence, and the Gospel needs it all, in
addition to their fidelity and patience with wandering sinners, in addition
134 [THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
to their large grasp of affairs, their attention to detail and energy in
action, that men who preach be filled with this glow of enthusiasm and
fervency of devotion that will carry them through hardship and let
them halt at no service and sacrifice. The seminaries need passion, a-
thing that cannot be taught, and can be imparted, if at all, only by
contagion.
Preaching is, after all, the distinctive function of the minister. But
the pulpit is not the only herald calling to be heard. The urgency and
the din of competition are great. Preaching, then, must have a message
worth the hearing. To-day it is not the manner so much as the matter
that counts. Mere oratory and rhetoric have vanished from before the
bar, from the public platform and political stump; it has a lessened
acceptance in the pulpit.
Matter need not embrace, nor need it totally avoid, politics, eco-
nomics education, art, philanthropy, nor any of the interests vital to
human life and progress, but the matter of the pulpit discourse, more
than of any other utterance, must be what can ever and always and
everywhere be called " the gospel." The gospel, as I understand it,
is a recital of the way in which man can come into fellowship with
his God; it is the appeal of the divine to the human and of the human
to the divine; it must always be a disclosure of the unseen to the hitherto
unseeing; it must have in it something of revelation, no matter what
the special theme nor the frequency of utterance.
We scarcely can teach men to pray; but all that is signified in the
ministry of public prayer should in some way be cultivated in young
men who hope to lead their fellow-men into communion with the un-
seen. If we, who are teachers, belong to a church which does not
employ liturgical forms, then is our task the more difficult, and the
more delicate in its difficulty. Yet, weary men, who have been pressed
six days in the week with sordid, worldly cares, are better ministered
to by the man who, human like themselves, can step sanely, yet surely,
out of these merely earthly scenes into the presence of the Holy One,
than by the man who merely preaches learned discourses or popular
homilies. Busy men — I venture to say, business men — appreciate
the uplift of prayer which, in phrase, in comprehensiveness, in point
of departure, in atmosphere, and in controlled, yet sustained, feeling,
goes itself and carries others into the presence of the Invisible. Prayer
is a blessed ministry. Too few pray as ministering spirits. Those
who do have a holy function.
THE DECLINE IN THE NUMBER OF STUDENTS FOR
THE MINISTRY
PRESIDENT ALFRED T. PERRY, D. D.
MARIETTA COLLEGE, MARIETTA, OHIO
The things we really want to know are: I. Just what is the truth
regarding the decline in numbers ? II. Wliat has led young men to shun
this profession in recent years ? III. What is the remedy for this state
of things ? How can we regain the devotion of young men ? .
The first question is purely a statistical one, to be answered through
the intelligent use of statistics. The answer to the second has been
made for us by the young men of to day who are looking forward to
the ministry. The answer to the third will represent only the opinion
of one interested student of this subject.
I have sought to gather my information widely and collate it care-
fully. Limiting my inquiry to the period since i8go, I have issued
circulars to 382 colleges and universities, to the Y. M. C. A. presidents
in 327 of them, to 120 theological seminaries, to the leaders and officers
in 21 denominations, as well as to numerous friends and representatives.
Out of the 382 colleges I have received replies, either through a
college officer or the Y. M. C. A. president, from 263. These reports
supplemented by those of the United States Commissioner of Educa-
tion, have furnished my answer to the first two questions.
Coming directly to our questions:
I. What is the truth in regard to the decline in number of students ?
Here are the figures of the United States Commissioner of Education :
THEOLOGICAL STUDENTS IN ALL SEMINARIES REPORTING, AND NUMBER IN
PROTESTANT SEMINARIES.
Year
Total Number
Protestant
Year
Total Number
Protestant
1870
3254
1893
7836
6541
1875
5234
1894
7658
6340
1880
5242
1895
8050
6ji6
1885
5775
1896
8017
65S7
1886
6370
5418
1897
8173
6514
1887
6306
5343
1898
8371
6491
1888
6512
5515
1899
8261
6155
1889
6989
5933
1900
8009
5975
1890
7013
6029
19OI
7567
5632
189I
7328
6006
1902
734?
5410
1892
7729
6360
1903
7372
5628
135
136 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
These figures are confessedly incomplete. Probably the Roman
Catholic figures of the early years are the most defective, so that the
actual increase in that denomination is less than appears. The net
figures, however, give probably a correct impression.
It will be seen that in 1895 the maximum was reached, since which
time there has been a rapid decline to the figures of the earlier years.
Fluctuation in numbers need not surprise us. This we find in other
professions. Medical students declined from 12,739 in 1882 to 11,059
in 1885; law students, from 3237 in 1881 to 2744 in 1885. Such re-
fluent waves of the oncoming tide are to be expected, and they are
frequently seen in the earlier years in the theological students. Still
this gives us little little comfort, when we contemplate the complete
ebb in the roll of Protestant students of theology. Subtract the 166
women in the Protestant seminaries in 1903, and the 108 in 1902, and
the situation is still worse:
1890, net 6029.
1902, net 5302.
1903, net 5462.
The population of the country has been growing, the number of
churches and church members has increased greatly, and yet the number
of male students in the Protestant seminaries of the country in 1903
was less by 567 than in 1890, and less than any year since 1887, except
1902, when there were were 727 fewer students than in 1890, and less
than any year since 1885.
A study of the statistics of different denominations gives the following
result :
Baptists. A fairly steady increase, notwithstanding a slight drop
in 1900 and 1902; from 658 in 1890 to 1095 in 1904.
Free-will Baptists. Great fluctuation; 54 in 1890, 43 in 1893, 106 in
1895, 47 in 1900. and 54 in 1903.
Congregationalists A great decline; from 588 in 1890, and a maximum
of 596 in 1892 to 378 in 1901, with slight recovery to 393 in 1904
Disciples. A steady and large increase; from 468 in 1890 to 807 in
1900 and 997 in 1904.
Lutherans (General Council). Fluctuation from 730 in 1890 to a
maximum of 1202 in 1890, and a drop to 905 in 1903, with a recovery
o 102 1 in 1904.
Methodists (North). Rise from 498 in 1890 to 676 in 1900, falling
to 612 in 1903.
Methodists (South). Have but one seminary, which trains only a
small per cent, of the ministers. This seminary shows an increase in
students, but ordinations have fallen off slightly since 1898.
DECLINE IN STUDENTS FOR THE MINISTRY 137
Methodist Protestant. Show decline to 1897, then a rise.
Presbyterians (North). Including Union Seminary in the statistics,
a steady increase from 786 in 1890 to a maximum of iioi in 1895, then
an equally steady decline to a minimum of 726 in 1902, with a slight
recovery since.
Presbyterians (South). A somewhat narrow fluctuation ; from 103
in 1890 to 194 in 1894, to 156 in 1900 and 158 in 1903.
Cnmberland Presbyterian. With only one Seminary, a wave-like in-
crease from 36 in 1890 to 65 in 1898, and 56 in 1903.
United Presbyterian. From 85 in 1890 to a maximum of 160 in
1897, caused in part by increase in women students, to a minimum of 84
in 1903.
Protestant Episcopal. A wave-like increase from 346 in 1890 to a
maximum of 467 in 1898, then a falling off to 406 in 1900, and a recovery
to 437 in 1903.
Reformed Church in America (Dutch). From 45 in 1890 to a max-
imum of 65 in 1898, then to a minimum of 42 in 1903.
United Brethren. 48 in 1890. Two high points, — 60 in 1893 and
59 in 1901; two low points, — 36 in 1898 and 37 in 1903.
Universalists. A rise from 68 in 1890 to 100 in 1893, then a large
decline to 41 in 1900 and 44 in 1903.
It thus appears that there is no uniformity of decline. The main-
tenance of some denominations, like the Disciples or the Northern Meth-
odists, may be in part accounted for by the raising of the standard of
the ministry, which has sent a larger proportion of ministerial candi-
dates to the seminaries.
As confirmatory of this, it may be noted that the state universities
report very few ministerial students, Virginia, with 18 out of 280;
having the largest proportion. The explanation given is that those
planning to enter the ministry go, as a rule, to denominational colleges.
The large universities make a very unfavorable showing; Princeton,
with over 40 out of 1286, being the best. President Harper states that
out of nearly 1200 men graduating from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and
Princeton in 1904, less than 30 were planning to enter the ministry.
The New England colleges afford a striking example of decline. Bates
reports seven ministerial students out of 250; Colby, seven out of 135;
Dartmouth, nine out of 830; Williams, five out of 434. Institutions
with fewer students, and those in the West, are the only ones whose
reports are at all encouraging.
We may conclude, then, that there has been an absolute decline in
the number of students for the ministry in our Protestant churches, a
138 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
decline chiefly in college students and among these chiefly from the
older, larger, and richer Eastern institutions.
II. In answering our second inquiry as to the causes for this de-
cline, the endeavor has been to get at the motives now influencing young
men in their decision as to the ministry. Instead of giving you a sta-
tistical result, I desire to reproduce the mind of the college student of
to-day as he faces the ministry, as I have learned it from the study of
the more than 400 replies received.
Bred in an atmosphere where everything is brought to the test of
dollars, the young man looks out upon life. The great prizes of the
business world, and the abundant opportunities for success, stand out
in sharp contrast with the inadequate provision for the ministry, — its
small, pinching salaries, the uncertain chance for advance, early super-
annuation, with no provision for old age.
The financial basis of the ministry is entirely different from that of
other professions. In business a fixed service brings a fixed salary, —
fidelity and hard work are rewarded, and one feels that he is responsible
for the size of his salary. In the ministry the duties are indefinite, pro-
motion does not at all depend upon faithful work, but upon certain
personal and popular qualities, the essential value of which is at least
questionable. In medicine and law, a given service receives a recognized
compensation. In the ministry, a man is called to give all his time and
thought and then to have his salary raised with difficulty, paid irregu-
larly and with grudging, giving him the sense of being an object of
charity. He has to beg for his pay, and get little at that. As one
tersely puts it; he is to be a pauper all his life.
Another group of deterrent reasons is based upon the attitude of
the church toward the minister, its lack of cordial support, its unchari-
table criticism, its hampering restrictions, both to thought and activity,
the isolation and moral seclusion which comes to the minister.
Only a few speak of the doctrinal disturbances, the break-up of old
faiths, so that the student is uncertain as to all belief, and feels that he
has nothing to preach. And combined with this is a fear lest one shall
lose his independence and freedom of thought.
No class of deterring reasons appears more frequently than that
which concerns the general popular estimate of ministers. The average
student attitude toward the minister is one of utter disregard, if not of
contempt. The ministry is of no reputation in the university. It is
said that the ministerials are not manly men; that ministers don't live
up to their own preaching; that the ministry is full of cheap, unprepared
material; and that it emphasizes its small men as other professions do not.
DECLINE IN STUDENTS FOR THE MINISTRY 139
May we ask now, How is it that the young man has come to have
these views of the ministry? We shall have to admit that there is a
great deal of truth in what is charged regarding churches and mini-
sters. The young man sees part of the situation accurately. The
trouble is he has a one-sided view. He does not see clearly the great
compensations that balance criticism and hardship and self-denial.
There has been a decline in those agencies most potent in the past
in leading men to the ministry: home influence, the consecration of
sons to this holy calling, the old-time academy with its constant pressure
toward this end, the pastors urging the claims of the ministry, the col-
lege presenting the same to its students. These all have largely ceased
their activity in this direction, and no other agencies have taken their
place. Hundreds of young men now in other callings might have been
turned to the ministry if the matter had only been presented to them.
Some blame — and more, I fear, than we dare to charge — must lie
at the doors of our good friends of the Y.M.C.A. Much as I honor this
organization, I must speak this word here among its friends. The
growth of this movement has been remarkable in the last twenty years,
and there has been a great demand for men to fill the places of secre-
taries, etc. With a perfected organization and a large number of field
secretaries, they have been appealing to college men, setting forth the
opportunities in that field. Wherever they have found a man of es-
pecial strength, they have laid siege to him until they have won him to
their cause. This is, of course, perfectly legitimate, only it is to be
greatly regretted that in many cases it has seemed necessary, in order
to exalt their own calling, to discredit the ministry.
It needs to be said, also, in kindness, but in frankness, that a potent
cause of this decline is the attitude and expressed opinion of some now
in the ministry. The lazy minister complains of his hard work; the
speculative minister rants about creeds and liberty of thought; the
sensationalist assails the churches, the ministers, and the seminaries;
the dyspeptic bewails the degeneracy of the times; some who have
suffered criticism retail their woes in the press; and the unworthy man
parades himself before the world. Now, there undoubtedly is room
for criticism of creeds, churches, and seminaries, but the spice added
to make a readable article and gain a hearing has surely given a wrong
impression.
III. What is the remedy for this decline ? How may the ministry
be made again attractive to the best men in our colleges ? First, some
encouraging signs: i. The past year or two shows a turning of the
tide from the extreme low point. In many denominations there is
I40 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
again an increase in students for the ministry. 2. Some of the semi-
naries have inaugurated a systematic visitation of the colleges in the
interest of the ministry. 3. The Y. M. C. A. leaders have turned their
attention to this problem. The conferences on the subject recently
held under the leadership of Mr. Mott are sure to be helpful. 4. The
attention of the churches and religious leaders is thoroughly fixed upon
the problem ; out of so much thinking and discussion some good ought
surely to come.
The real remedy that must in some way be found is to make the
ministry again respectable and attractive in the eyes of the college stu-
dent. How much may be done to remove the real evils in the case, the
small compensation, the uncertain tenure, the excessive criticism, the
restraint of freedom, is not altogether clear, and will vary in amount
and method in different denominations. But that something ought
to be done in this direction is evident, and something is surely possible.
More important is it, to correct the false impressions that are abroad,
and to make the real difficulties seem small by a positive presentation
of the great place to be filled, and the large work to be accomplished
in the present age by the well-equipped consecrated Christian minister.
In securing this result I am convinced that the college department
of the Y. M. C. A. will be by far the most effective agency. It has a
thorough organization; it has the ear of the college man, and its ex-
perience will enable it at once to bring the claims of the ministry effect-
ively to bear upon the students. Let this be done year after year, and
we shall see notable results.
The distinct effort made to have the claims of the foreign field
pressed home upon the consciences of students has produced the strik-
ing result that in many institutions the number of student volunteers
exceeds that of those looking forward to the ministry. (Harvard, 9 min-
isters, 12 volunteers; University of IlHnois, 4 ministers, 25 volunteers;
Ohio State University, 2 ministers, 7 volunteers.) Let a similar effort
be made to recruit the ministry, and similar results may be looked for.
If decisions for the foreign work are expected from college men and
secured in large numbers, there is no reason why the college period
should not be fruitful in many decisions for the ministry.
We must create a new sentiment regarding the ministry. Laymen
must learn to treat the pastor with more reasonable regard. Ministers
must learn to estimate in due proportion the real privilege and the more
superficial difficulty. We must all pray the Lord of the harvest to send
forth laborers, while those who are set as overseers in the field must see
to it that no laborers wait in the market-place till the day declines be-
cause no one has summoned them to the work.
DECLINE IN STUDENTS FOR THE MINISTRY 141
Discussion
PROFESSOR WILLISTON WALKER, Ph.D., D.D.
YALE DIVINITY SCHOOL, NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT
An observation of more than twenty years convinces me that there
has been an improvement in the quality of students seeking the ministry,
and that they average, in mental ability, fully the equals of any body
of students preparing for any profession. In character, now as always,
their rank is, save in the rarest instances, unexceptionable. So far as
there has been any change affecting the quahty of students, the causes
which have led to the diminution of the number of theological candi-
dates have probably worked towards improvement. The most con-
spicuous of the causes of the relative decrease in the number of theo-
logical students is the rise to significance of other scholarly professions
besides that of the ministry. Teaching and journalism are essentially
new professions in the extent of the appeal which they now make, and
the call, particularly of the teaching profession, is one of exceeding at-
tractiveness to that very class which would, most naturally, turn towards
the ministry. The appeal of medicine and of law is undoubtedly much
greater than it was forty years ago. The revolutionary discoveries in
surgery, the almost universal recognition of the need of a highly edu-
cated body of physicians, the increasing business of the country and
the consequent augmentation of the opportunities of the legal pro-
fession, have rendered the incentives to enter these life-callings much
greater than was the case half, or even a quarter, of a century since. In-
stead of being, as it once was, the profession which appealed to most
men of scholarly tastes, ethical purpose, and Christian character in our
colleges and universities, the ministry has become only one among sev-
eral.
Another cause, one that is certainly remediable, is the short pastorate.
Investigation of lists of graduates of our theological schools shows that
very many have changed their pastorates once, at least, within the last
three years, some twice, and a few even three times. It is a natural
and justifiable demand that one who gives his life to a particular pro-
fession should expect from that profession reasonable compensation
and support. That is not at present the uniform prospect of the min-
istry. It may be questioned whether it is even the average prospect
of the ministry. But no small part of this restlessness leading to fre-
quent ministerial changes is chargeable to the ministry itself. The
minister can move more readily than the physician or the lawyer, and
with less loss, and therefore allows himself to entertain the hope of
bettering his position, or at least avoiding existing discomforts by a
change.
142 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
A fourth cause is the change in what is required of a minister by
the average congregation. In some respects this akeration is greatly
to his advantage. The minister is now expected to touch common in-
terests at many points, to be an organizer of aggressive church work,
a teacher of the young, a man broadly interested in all that makes for
the betterment of the community. Nowadays, owing partly to the
great diffusion of entertaining periodical literature and the relative ces-
sation of interest in doctrinal exposition, the demand made of the pul-
pit is one which few men can supply. Ethical and religious truths must
be made interesting; they must be put in such form as to attract
a jaded attention. The multiplicity of labors now expected of a pas-
tor may doubtless be remedied in larger churches by the increased
subdivision of ministerial work.
It is evident that the relative decline in the number of ministerial
students is a phenomenon in some measure to be expected in our transi-
tional age. But some of its most conspicuous causes are remediable.
We need a deeper appreciation on the part of the churches of the dignity
and importance of the ministerial profession. And this increased appre-
ciation of the dignity and significance of the ministry may best be
wrought out by the ministry itself. It is to be feared that if a lower
estimate of the ministry now widely obtains, it is the ministry itself
which is in considerable measure responsible. We need to insist, in
our own thought, upon the dignity and honor of the caUing which is
ours. We need to urge it upon young men, especially upon young men
of wealth, as a service of joy, usefulness, and sacrifice, beyond any other
calling. Its claims are far too infrequently presented to the young men
of our schools and colleges. Its usefulness and honorableness is too
seldom impressed upon our congregations. These defects may be reme-
died and they should be as far as hes in our power, for His sake who
honors men by calling them into His service in the noblest of all pro-
fessions,— the Christian minister.
SHALL A COMMITTEE BE APPOINTED TO REPORT ON
THE CURRICULA OF THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES,
WITH A VIEW TO ESTABLISHING LARGER UNIFORM-
ITY?
PROFESSOR MELANCTHON W. JACOBUS, D.D.
HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT.
The discussion is not as to whether there is lack of uniformity in
the curricula of our theological schools. The catalogues, registers, and
year-books published by these schools are evidence enough of the wide
difference in the selection of studies pursued, and the yet wider difference
in the arrangement of their pursuing.
It is a silent comment on the unfortunate separation among the schools
in the work, which, after all, is common to them, and it is an explanation,
to a certain extent, of the differentiation in the product which these
schools turn out — a differentiation the effect of which is unfortunate
in the work accomplished by the student, and the process of which is
unfortunate in the work carried on by the seminary, while it is an expla-
nation, also, to a certain extent, of the restlessness among the students,
that sends them drifting among the seminaries for combinations of
courses, the cost of which is large to the seminary in the effort at study-
adjustment, and to the students themselves in the demoralization which
always comes from scattered and unclassified work.
Confessedly, it is only a partial explanation; for both differentiation
and restlessness are due to many causes, some of them in the student
as well as in the school, and some lying much deeper in both school
and student than mere content and arrangement of studies. At this
point of curriculum, however, there does lie a very definite cause for
both evils, so that we are justified in saying that our question is one
which concerns both student and seminary, and merits, on our part, not
only a careful consideration, but also as hearty an attempt as is possible
to bring it to its best answer.
This best answer, I am convinced, lies in the direction of the appoint-
ment of such a committee as is proposed. The reasons for my convic-
tion are:
I. The fact, already noted and patent to us all, of the sweeping
differences which now exist among the curricula of the seminaries, and
the inevitable separation which these differences cause. Years ago,
doubtless, such separation would have been considered the proper
143
144 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
denominational thing. It would not have been thought possible that
credal dogmatics could be taught, and a sectarian ministry prepared
for, without a relative institutional isolation. In fact, it is largely
because of what obtained ecclesiastically a generation ago that we have
the present pedagogical situation. But not only has denominationalism
lost to a large extent its separating power, we are coming upon an era
of widespread thoughtful evangelism in which the common service of
the kingdom will emphasize the need, I do not say of an identical prep-
aration for this service, since this would be impracticable and most
unwise but of a preparation which shall carry with it as large a sense
as possible of community of purpose, and as large a fact as possible
of fellowship of process; for these things make the strength of a common
service to a common cause.
II. The fact of the student restlessness among the seminaries, and its
inevitable annoyance to the institution and demoralization to the man.
I am well aware that there are not a few educators who hold the
student to be best prepared who has carried through his preparation
on the eclectic principle — a study here and a study there, a teacher
here and a teacher there, a seminary here and a seminary there — and
many things everywhere, and some things nowhere. I am not disposed
to deny the value of this method, especially as I have seen some excellent
results which have issued from it — men taken out of a narrow en-
vironment in which all education had been carried on up to college
graduation, and put into a broader contact with men and minds, in
order that their preparation might be one which would fit them for a
living service in a life work. This is not a bad thing, if it be not carried
to a frittering extreme. It is a thing to be encouraged if it can be safe-
guarded and controlled. But the case must be an urgent one which
would justify the study cost to the student and the teaching cost to the
seminary which this process now involves. A relative uniformity of
curricula would reduce the cost to both parties concerned, would make
the process possible in many cases where now it cannot be enjoyed,
and would reduce to a minimum the student restlessness which now
exists because a seminary rivalry, by strange devices of encylcopsedia
and stranger arts of schedule, seems to throw discredit on all curricula
which are not measured to one local line.
III. The fact, not yet mentioned, and perhaps not wholly manifest
to all even when mentioned, but true nevertheless, that what would be
aimed at in such a uniformity would be simply a common background
on which necessary modifications might be placed without disturbing
effect.
CURRICULA OF THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 145
To one who gives careful study to the curricula which now exist, it
must be clear that the largest evil in them is not the mere fact of their
comprehensive variations, but the fact that these variations involve to
a great extent an unscientific encyclopaedia. Obviously, in the student's
preparation for the ministry there is a sequence of studies which is
pedagogically right. If he is to study his Bible at first-hand, languages
must be given him at the start, as his tools of work. If he is to study
his Bible historically, criticism must be given him before his exegesis.
If he is to make his theology the product of his Bible study, there must
be a certain arrangement in which exegesis. Biblical theology, and
Biblical dogmatics will furnish him, in their order, the interpretative
materials from which he is to formulate his theological conclusions.
Any other arrangement will result, for example, in giving him a poor
exegesis because of an imperfect language, or in confusing him with
placing the historical foundation of his exegesis on top of it instead of
underneath it, or in imposing his theology upon his interpretation in-
stead of drawing it from his interpretation. Unfortunately, the curricula
of our schools present no such uniform arrangement. With some, the lan-
guage work is not completed in the first year, but drags itself along
with grammar and lexicon into the later parts of the course. With
many, criticism does not come until exegesis is well on its way — in one
instance being reserved, in its Old Testament department, until senior
year, when it is made a required study. With not a few, theology is
begun at once, and, save when delayed, is not prepared for with any-
thing more than a hurried exegesis, the object of which seems to be
rather the covering of ground than the drill in interpretative method.
Evidently, if nothing more were to be accomplished by the proposed com-
mittee than a uniformity of encyclopaedia, enough benefit would
accrue to the seminaries and their students to more than justify the
committee's labor; for it would not only help the work which the indi-
vidual seminary is trying to do with its own students, but, in case of
student transfer from one seminary to another, it would remove the
greatest cause of institutional annoyance in adjustment of schedule,
and the largest source of student irritation in demoralization of work.
But, on this basis of uniform encyclopaedia there would lie before the
committee the possibility of proposing an outline content of study, which
might be a valuable suggestion to many of the smaller schools and a not
altogether unnecessary correction to some of the larger schools. For
it is quite evident that the year-books before us show not only that the
smaller school curricula could be greatly enriched without cost to the
management, or much effort on the part of the faculty, but that the
146 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
larger school curricula are, in not a few cases, tending in the direction
of such over-speciaUzation of work as threatens that very interrelation
of studies which encyclopaedia designs to secure. There are such things
as fads, even in theological education, and the temptation to develop
a passing popular course of study into disproportionate size is great,
while the yielding to it is certain to work harm to that cultural spirit of
education which should obtain in the preparation of men for the min-
istry, if it obtains anywhere at all.
The chance which the proposed committee would have to suggest
ways for the correcting of the above evils, and the consequent strength-
ening of the seminaries at the points where they are best doing their
work, seems to me to be good reason why the committee should be
appointed.
IV CHURCHES AND PASTORS
EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE CHURCH
Christ as a Teacher
REV. D. A. GOODSELL, D.D., S.T. D., LL. D.,
RESIDENT METHODIST EPISCOPAL BISHOP OF NEW ENGLAND
Christ as a teacher antedated Christ as the Redeemer. The
Sermon on the Mount to the multitude, the doctrine of the new birth
to Nicodemus, of the spirituaHty of God and of true worship to the
woman at the well, came before the " It is finished " of the cross. Be-
cause they came before the death of our Lord they are not separated
from it. They lead up to it as nerves to the brain; they are illuminated
by it as the path is which leads to the light. Sin has burrowed so deeply
into humanity; has so completely infected it, and is so much the great
obstacle to the incoming of the Truth, that it is no wonder that the
Church has given so much emphasis to the changing of moral con-
ditions, rather than emphasizing the founding of a school by our Lord
and pressing reUgious education as a preparation for regeneration.
There is no division among us as to- the necessity of education in
religion, or as to the teaching duty of the Church or that the Church
must be the school of Christ. Because this has been faultily measured,
we have such misconceptions of the church among some Christians
and among some of those who yield no allegiance to the Church.
It seems certain that the Holy Spirit in many cases, both in Chris-
tian and non-Christian lands, anticipates Christian teaching by a vision of
personal need and of the relations of the essential, if not the historical,
Christ to the soul. In this way were and are built up the souls of
whom Peter said: " In every nation he that feareth him and worketh
righteousness is accepted with him." That this is God's way for all
is not to be believed. Our Master was a tireless teacher. It is a
question whether he gave his greatest truths in his sermon, to the mul-
titude or to the single soul. He gave a body of truth to men. He
connected it with all things great and small in his material kingdom.
The lantern of the virgin, the broom of the sweeper, the search for
the penny, the yeast of the housewife, the seed of the sower, the lost
sheep, the wayside grain, the lovely flower, the wayward wind, were all
allied and all explained. He was the first Christian author on nature
and the supernatural, and on natural law in the spiritual world.
147
148 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
I have thought that as teachers we have lost power by neglecting
the Master's method. Our Fathers in all the churches feared lest they
humbled the spiritual in making it seem natural. So they harked
away to history and to difficult philosophizing, to schoolmen's subtle-
ties of logic and casuistry, gathering illustrations from what the masses
do not and cannot know; obtaining much repute for learning and
profundity; preaching to the twentieth man while the nineteen slept,
" enduring hardness " with a patience they thought to be a means of
grace. A proof of the divinity of Christianity is that it has survived
some of the teaching of its modern teachers.
Further, the condition of our modern life take the priest of the family
from his home before the children wake; mothers in such families
have as little time for being a Lois or a Eunice as the fathers have
for being family priests. So much of that sweet and noble religious
work of father and mother which some of us recall a half-century and
more ago has ceased; has been put into the hands of the secular and
the Sunday school teacher, who is often without knowledge of life, and
sometimes without religious depth or experience. Yet I must believe
that the cases of gross ignorance of Christian history and doctrine in
well-grown boys and college students are chiefly from those homes
that are not Christian in any other sense than that they exist in a Chris-
tian community.
That the moral bond which holds society together must be forged
by some stronger force than convenience or natural ethics, I fully be-
lieve. " Thou God seest me " is a nobler restraint than " My neigh-
bor or the police will see me." The man who is really good is the one
whose heart is toward good because of his obligation to the Good One,
God. This obligation does not vary. It does not yield to weakness
— to business trickery, to the example of others. It would not vary
if the state passed from individualism to socialism. It is as firm in
the night as in the day, as lofty alone as in the multitude. This obli-
gation cannot be truly perceived or be effectively binding without
the " washing of regeneration." To the soul thus changed^ the
ethical is the important, the all-important.
The Church as an Educator
REV. ALBERT W. HITCHCOCK
PASTOR CENTRAL CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS
After the father of the family, the priest was the first teacher of
mankind. Every great religion has been an educator of the people.
A thousand years before our era, the Parashade for training Brahman
EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE CHURCH 149
youth were scattered over India. Excavation'^in^the^Euphrates val-
ley reveals the Babylonian libraries annexed to their temples. Bud-
dha was called the " Teacher," and his temples are still the only schools
for multitudes. The mosque has been for centuries the college and the
library of Islam, and Mohammedan scholars once preserved for us
the learning of the East, through a crisis in the Christian Church.
The Hebrews made education a religious duty, and religion the cHmax
of education. Jesus Christ was pre-eminently a teacher. He gathered
his school of twelve about him, and with his last commandment sent
them forth to teach all nations in His name. That commission they
delivered to all who came after them. Not only has the Church main-
tained her own inner culture, but by force of her truest genius she has
made the cause of general intelligence her charge out of a deep neces-
sity.
A recognized order of teachers appeared in the earliest of the
churches. Within a century catechetical schools grew up to fit ap-
plicants for membership in the Church. Schools of more elaborate
culture developed from these training classes, as at Alexandria, to
prepare teachers and preachers for the rapidly extending propagan-
da. A religion with a book was of necessity an educational force
wherever it went.
For centuries, whatever of education Europe offered was admin-
istered by the Church. Ulfilas, Martin of Tours, Nestorius, and Patrick
stand among the earliest champions of education. From the council of
Constantinople in 680, when it was decreed that bishops and priests every-
where should provide schools free of cost for the poor, and at proper
charges for those better endowed, education was the acknowledged
duty of the Church, although these decrees were expressions of an
ideal rather than the assurance of actual facts.
Charlemagne provided public schools, grammar schools, and semi-
naries, and required that these be sustained by cathedral and mon-
astery. He gathered about him wise men like Alcuin of York and
Ansgar, and scores of others caught the contagion of high resolve and
devotion. The torch was handed from man to man across the Conti-
nent and down the centuries. The cathedrals and monasteries were
the solitary seats of culture until the universities and the New Learn-
ing appeared, and these also found a welcome and their early nuture
in the Church. All the professions were wholly in the hands of the
clergy until the sixteenth century. The first layman to be seated in
a professor's chair at any university won the right in 1482, after a
severe struggle. Indeed, the formative purpose of the European uni-
I50 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
versities was the same that gave birth to our American colleges, — pro-
vision for an educated clergy.
What the Renaissance began the Reformation carried out, and
education broadened in its purpose to provide for all who cared to
study. The note of universality was given to the universities. Wher-
ever the Reformed faith prevailed, sciences were freely studied and a
broader range was given to thought. If direct control by the clergy
was less evident, the spirit of the Church still ruled in the centers of
learning under patronage of the state or of laymen, as truly as where
the hierarchy dominated classroom and faculty.
Under the impulse of a counter-reformation, the Jesuits organized
a teaching body, the like of which the world has never seen, and for a
century controlled the education of Roman Catholics, and largely also
of Protestant youth. The Bible appeared in the tongue of the
common people, and free learning always follows the Bible among the
people. Popular education became as much the duty of the Prot-
estant churches as preaching or worship. If the care of the school
and university was handed over to the state, so was the care of reli-
gion, in Germany and England, in Holland and the northern countries.
But it was done with the understanding that the State was Christian,
and would safeguard the interests of the Church in school and con-
gregation alike.
In our own country, Massachusetts Bay Colony had hardly estab-
lished itself before those wise, foreseeing Puritans planned their com-
mon schools. The pastors were their first teachers, and when John
Harvard endowed the college lest there should arise " an ilHterate
ministry to the churches when our present minister shall lie in the dust,"
the entire Church spoke through him. It has been speaking ever since,
through Yale, Bowdoin, Trinity, Wesleyan, Amherst, and Williams,
and Dartmouth, every one of them the product of its spirit and self-
sacrificing bounty; through Oberlin and Marietta, Beloit and Grin-
nell, Fargo and Drury, Colorado Springs, and the Christian colleges
of the western slope. What power has cared for negro education at
Fiske and Hampton, Atlanta and Tuskegee, Howard and Tougaloo,
and Straight? The Indian has been uplifted, not by the government
agent, but by the Christian teacher. Surely, the Church is still the
educator of the nation. This educational impulse is deep and strong
in Christianity. It is a part of its very life.
Dealing with religious natures, the Church has carried on an inner
training of emotion, intellect, and will through her ritual and preaching.
The forms of her worship that were gradually wrought out, sensuous.
EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE CHURCH 151
mystical, appealing, had their reason in their educational value. Wor-
ship became a school for the emotions and a stimulus to the imagina-
tion. When it ended there, this partial training gave an arrested de-
velopment that left its pupils children still. When the pulpit has been
silent, men have fallen away from the Church, and its influence has
waned. Preaching has an intimate and essential part to play in the
instruction of the Church. The great preachers have been teachers
of the people, from St. Paul to Phillips Brooks.
It is too late now to insist upon the duty of parents to teach their own
children in religious things. Not all children have religious parents.
Christian people have become so accustomed to assign the function of
teaching to others, that they are too ignorant and unwilling to attempt
the task. It is safer to hand the average child over to such teachers
as the Church can muster, than to leave him to the indifference and
neglect of his home. To ask the state to do this work of religious educa-
tion is to ask the impossible at present. For many years to come, this
essential part of education must be administered by the Church out-
side the schools, as a sacred trust imposed upon it by the state. Re-
ligious teaching we must have, and at least upon a par with that given
to our children in other branches of culture. Our equipment for it,
desultory and incomplete, should be made as excellent as that pro-
vided by the state. We are the state, and we are not doing all of our
duty if we fail to provide the best facilities for the religious education
of our children.
Much has been done to meet the demand for better religious in-
struction. I have recently made investigation of present conditions
throughout the Northern states. Out of 1,200 inquiries equally divided
among Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, and Presbyterians,
it is significant that responses came from one-half. 190 Congrega-
tional, 150 Presbyterian, 123 Methodist, and 121 Baptist answers were
of use. In reply to the first question, " In preaching, do you seek
definitely to teach, or rather to inspire ?" The usual answer was "Both,"'
but the emphasis was clearly placed upon teaching. I learned that 63
per cent, of the Baptists sending data, 55 per cent of the Congrega-
tionalists, 51 per cent of the Methodists, and 52 per cent of the Presby-
terians teach regular classes in Sunday school, while enough more
serve as substitute teachers to increase the ratio to 70 per cent for the
first, and 60 per cent for the other three denominations. Of them all,
only 21 teach in junior or primary grades. The International Lessons
are in use by 68 per cent of Baptists, 49 per cent of Congregationalists,
80 per cent of Methodists, and 67 per cent of Presbyterians who sent
in replies.
IS2 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Pastor's classes outside of Sunday School are reported by 35 per
cent, of Baptists, 63 per cent, of Congregationalists, 25 per cent, of
Methodists, and 30 per cent, of Presbyterians; but very few of the Bap-
tist classes are the catechumen classes covered in the question. Con-
gregationalists report 47 original courses and many published lessons
and catechisrhs. Three Baptists, 42 Congregationalists, 31 Methodists,
and 50 Presbyterians use catechisms, but the last two sects teach them
in Sunday school, and Congregationalists generally make the catechism
an outline rather than a task for the memory. Fifteen different cat-
echisms are named.
A large number of pastors engage in various sorts of teaching out-
side of Sunday school and the catechumen's class. Some make the mid-
week service their opportunity, others employ the young people's meet-
ing for teaching, fewer hold teachers' meetings, more than twice as
many hold week-day Bible classes, and 26 report mission study classes,
equally divided between Congregationalists and all the rest. New
Testament Greek, literature, music, philosophy, history, and sociology
are also taught. While few report thoroughgoing plans for a distinctly
educational ministry, the influence of so much teaching and of the
definite intention to make their preaching educational rather than sim-
ply inspirational must be of value in strengthening the influence of
the Church in the community.
Culture Courses in Churches
REV. E. E. CHIVERS, D.D.
FIELD SECRETARY AMERICAN BAPTIST HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY, NEW YORK CITY
About twelve years ago the Baptist Young People's Union of Amer-
ica inaugurated a comprehensive series of Biblical and missionary
studies, in four-year periods, for the young people of that denomination.
The Biblical studies, in thirty lessons a year, treated such topics as
" Preparations for the Messiah," " The Life and Teachings of Jesus,"
" The Labors and Letters of the Apostles," " Struggles for Distinc-
tive Principles," " Doctrines of our Faith," " The Christian Life."
These studies were prepared by men of recognized scholarship, and
were taken by thousands- of young people — by many, it is true, in a
very superficial way, by others with earnest purpose. The benefit of
these studies to multitudes of young people, and to the churches of
which they were members, is beyond question. To many they came
as a revelation, broadening the horizon, giving men vision of the one
increasing purpose of divine salvation, confirming faith, enriching
experience, and stimulating to intelligent service. Pastors found men
EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE CHURCH 153
and efficient helpers, and received for themselves intellectual stimulus.
The topic of study for the current year is " Great Christian Truths,"
the lessons being prepared by Edward Judson, D. D., with " Sugges-
tions for Collateral Study " by Spencer B. Meeser, D. D. It is grati-
fying to know that six thousand of the pamphlets containing instal-
ments of these lessons are being sent out monthly. Lessons on the
same topics in simplified forms are issued for juniors.
This represents a kind of work which may be pursued in the churches
at large. Wliile this great organization, the Religious Education As-
sociation, is bringing forth and proclaiming its lofty ideals, formulat-
ing its comprehensive plans, and seeking to co-ordinate the agencies
for religious education, there are some practical forms in which the
work of education may be carried on now in our churches. We can
inauguarate —
1 . A New Method of Bible Study
There are multitudes of people in our churches whose treatment of
the Bible is strangely out of harmony with their professions concerning
it. They profess to regard it as the authoritative and supreme revela-
tion of God; yet they are content with a fragmentary and superficial
knowledge of it, which they would be ashamed to confess in regard to
any text-book that they need in the school. The progress of historical
criticism has made it possible for us to read and interpret the book
along these lines to an extent and with a certainty never before pos-
sible. In the light of historical criticism the messages of the old prophets
stand out with new significance; we have a new vision of the historical
Christ and of the meaning of his teachings and of those of the Apostles;
we can read the book with new discrimination as to its values. Here
is a door of opportunity through which, surely, a pastor should seek to
lead his people — as many as will, and especially the young. Such a
culture course would quicken new interest in Bible study; it would
invest the old book with a new charm; it would furnish a broader
base for religious experience and put underneath faith a deeper, stronger
foundation; it would meet the scientific temper and intellectual de-
mands of our times; it would be in harmony with the methods to
which our young people are accustomed in the schools, but which
they so often miss in the church, and might thus help to check the ten-
dency to alienation from the church. There is need of —
2. A Course in Christian Ethics
Religion aims at right living. It is more than creed; it is more than
a ritual; it is more than a rapture; it is more than a round of activities.
154 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
It is essentially a life. Christian truth is not a tinted but vaporous
cloud to be gazed at and speculated about as an apocalypse in the air;
it is an inspiration that expresses itself in right living and impels to hon-
orable conduct in all life's relations.
The trend of thought in our time is distinctly towards the more
ethical conception of Christianity. Less value is attached to emotional
frames of mind or to dogmatic statements of belief, and more to right-
eousness in life.
Here, again, is a wide field and an open door of opportunity. The
true ethical life has been defined as " the fulfillment of all personal rela-
tions." These relations are not only manifold, but also in many cases
delicate and perplexing, calling for keen discernment and discrimina-
tion. There is need of clearness of vision, sanity of judgment, strength
of principle, sensitiveness of conscience, and, above all, of supreme
loyalty to God. The pastor who leads his people — as many as will,
and especially the young — in an orderly and comprehensive way, to 'b
clear vision of their personal relations and duties, and to an application
of Christian principles to those relations, is performing an invaluable
service, which will bear fruit in attainment in " the pure art of living."
There is room and need, also, of —
3. A Course of Training in Forms and Methods of Christian Work
There are multitudes of people in the churches who would willingly
engage in some form of active, beneficent ministry — and this is espe-
cially true of our young people — if they only knew what, and where,
and how. They listen to exhortations to service; the feeling and the
will are stirred by the appeal; they are ready to engage in active ser-
vice; but in the absence of definite statement they do not know how to
act intelligently. They need to be taught the breadth and many-
sidedness of Christian work; the religious value of any really useful
work, special forms of service in the church and in the community which
offer scope for religious activity, with wise methods for the expression
of activity.
No pastor who seeks to secure an all-round religious culture for
his people will fail to provide some method for —
4. A Study of Missions
This will broaden the horizon, enlarge the sympathies, bring into
closer fellowship with the thought and purpose and mission of Christ,
and lead to a new interest in and a new interpretation of ciurent events
and world-movements, as being related to the progress of the kingdom
of God upon earth.
EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE CHURCH 155
But I can not further particularize. I have indicated simply some
of the lines along which it is quite practicable for the pastor to lead
his people, and in so doing to contribute to the development of Chris-
tian character and efficiency. Difficulties will, of course, suggest
themselves, but none that are insurmountable. Not all pastors, in-
deed, are qualified, either temperamentally or mentally, for the specific
work of teaching; but in many who seem to possess no special aptitude
there is latent faculty that might be developed by doing. WTiere pas-
tors lack the gift, the services of others may often be enlisted. It may
be said that the time and strength of busy pastors are already over-
taxed with multitudinous duties and cares. A revision of plans of work
may be necessary, and some things of lesser moment and value be set
aside in order that the larger claims of religious culture may be met.
It may be said further, that comparatively few of the people will enter
upon any such courses as have been outlined. Granting that, the
investment of time and strength and personality in the training of the
few may in the long run yield larger returns in the kingdom than any
other that can be made.
Discussion
REV. EDWARD CUMMINGS
PASTOR SOUTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH (UNITARIAN) OF BOSTON CAMBRIDGE,
MASSACHUSETTS
What is needed more than anything else is the kind of instruction
which teaches us to write History with a large H and Nature with a
large N. Write your history that way, and immediately the unhappy
distinction between sacred history and profane history, between
things sacred and things secular, disappears — just as the unhappy
conflict between religion and science vanishes when we learn to write
Nature with a large N. There is no reason why this proposition should
seem strange or new to you. There is plenty of good precedent for it.
Why is it that this story of Jewish life and thought is called the Bible,
the Book of books ? Why is it that for thousands of years, generation
after generation has found strength and comfort and inspiration in these
naive records ? It is simply because the v^riters wrote their history and
their stories and their poems with the large H. It was God's story
which they recorded; it was the story of the way in which God had
created the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that in them is: of
the way in which He had revealed his laws of life and prosperity to
great patriots and leaders, like Abraham, Isaac, and Moses. This
Bible owes its perennial power largely to the fact that in it History is
156 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
written with a large H and Nature with a large N. There is absolutely
no precedent in the Old Testament for our modern habit of distinguish-
ing between religious truth and scientific truth.
Think of the inspiration which would come to us and our children
if the writers of history and the teachers of history realized that our
history is just as sacred as ever Jewish history was; that our people are
a chosen people as truly as ever the Hebrews were. Think what an
inspiration it would be, if we should gather our children about us and
repeat to them the sacred history of our own beloved country — the
true and miraculous story of how God brought our Pilgrim Fathers
and Puritan ancestors out of the house of bondage and the land of Egypt.
How God brought our pious forefathers, with their wives and little ones,
safely across wintry seas more formidable than any Red Sea. How
God led our fathers and mothers in their wanderings in the vast unex-
plored wilderness of this new world. How He delivered them from
pestilence, and famine, and sword, from savage beasts, and still more
savage men. How He made of this little handful of chosen people a great
nation. How He gave them leaders, statesmen, prophets and teachers,
inventors and discoverers, like Washington, Franklin, Lincoln, Agassiz,
Emerson, who were greater than the patriarchs of old, and saw God
more clearly than Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, or Luther, or Calvin
could see Him. How God has punished us and our forefathers for
the sin of slavery, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children
unto the third and fourth generation. How He has taught us and our
fathers in the name of trade, commerce, factory legislation, conflicts of
labor and capital, the impossibility of successful self-seeking, and the
absolute necessity of seeking first the welfare of God's kingdom of the
social family. Most inspiring of all, how God, after sifting the nations
of the earth to get this nation, has intrusted this chosen people with
the lofty mission of making the family kingdom of democracy come on
earth as it is in heaven.
This is the inspiring history which I would I might engrave upon
the heart and mind of every boy and girl, every man and woman in
this beloved country. It is this story, His story, God's story, and not
the mere dates and details and raw materials of history, that every
child in our public schools ought to learn by heart. It is His story, and
not mere history, that the historian should write and the teachers and
professors in colleges and universities should teach. If the schools do
not teach this, then is their teaching vain. If the universities do not
teach this, then is their wisdom foolishness and their light darkness.
If education does not center about this, then it is but a blind leader of
the blind.
EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE CHURCH 157
But when we have leared to write Nature with a large N, and History
with a large H, we shall find the real beauty and inspiration of life
in this reunion of science and religion, of sacred and secular. Then
education will teach us how the world is God's world. Then astronomy
and the music of the spheres will tell of the glory and grandeur and
rationality of it. Then psychology will teach us how to will and do
God's infinitely rational and good pleasure.
REV. JOHN R. GOW
PASTOR PERKINS STREET BAPTIST CHURCH, SOMERVILLE, MASSACHUSETTS
I can offer but a single suggestion toward this discussion. Perhaps
it will be best stated in the familiar words with which the writer of the
Fourth Gospel declares his purpose in writing the Gospel: " That
ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that,
believing, ye may have life in His name." For me, the educational
aims of the Church are summed in the word " life " ; that life is to be
reached through believing; and that believing is nothing short of sur-
render in full to what is conceived to be the supreme disclosure of the
Divine Presence in the forms of humanity. The vision of an ideal
social order under the name of the Kingdom, the setting forth of the
principles controlling spiritual existence in time and in eternity, all
the truths discovered, revealed, and articulated, by which the thought
of man is brought into harmony with the great realities, and even the
exhibition of the highest human personalities as embodiments of
the Divine Personality, are in the New Testament only means to an
end. Whatever the subject-matter of its teaching may be, its aim is
life for the believer.
Pre-eminently do the conditions which surround the educational
work of the church at the present time demand that this aim of " life by
faith " be kept clearly and steadfastly in view. The Church is, per-
force, sharing its honored positions as teacher with many other insti-
tutions seeking human welfare. Even her specialty of fostering the
religious life has been successfully invaded. The temper of the com-
mon-thinking denies her exclusive claims. Neither cloistered nor
scholastic instruction falls on very attentive ears. The men in the
stirring arenas of the modern world have neither time nor patience
for what does not plainly concern the struggle for life. Make it evi-
dent that the Church has found the motives to the noblest and suc-
cessful living, and that her servants and teachers know how to bring
these motives to bear on the average man so as to put life into him,
and the modern man is ready to respond.
158 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Such life can never escape from God, its source. It may be that
rationalism is the foster child of reformation, but in due season a
spiritual faith is born of rationalism itself. The power men seek
in the religion and education of the churches is ever the mighty power
of an endlessly enlarging life.
This, then, is my single contention, that the aim of religious edu-
cation, in our day, is to deal with all the material that comes to hand
from all the universe of knowledge and revelation, and so to present and
interpret it, according to the wisest pedagogical methods, as to produce
life in individuals by bringing them into conscious and believing action
as in the presence of Him " in whom we live and move and have our
being."
THE EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE PASTOR
The Pastor as Teacher
REV. EVERETT D. BURR, D.D.
PASTOR FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, NEWTON CENTER, MASSACHUSETTS
I venture to suggest some definite ways in which the pastor may
render valuable service as a teacher.
First of all, as the teacher 0} teachers. It is easier to criticise the
inefficiency of modern Sunday school teachers than it is to provide those
who can do any better. The young men and women of our churches
who are enrolled in the teaching force of our Sunday schools are doing
the best they know how to do. They are to be congratulated, not
criticised; praised, not ridiculed. They cannot go to a school of peda-
gogy; they cannot master the treatises upon the subject. To offer
them a recent volume on psychology would be to dishearten them, yet
they are being told by ardent and eloquent speakers at Sunday school
conventions that unless their teaching accords with modern pedagogical
and psychological methods they are really doing harm to the souls of
their children. They become discouraged, grieve over their lack of
preparedness for so serious responsibilties, and not infrequently give
up their tasks. The more conscientious, earnest, and intelligent of
the teachers are the most sensitive to their own inadequacy. A pastor's
class for teacher-training will meet such a condition and supply the
need. Here the simple, fundamental laws of mind may be explained
in a friendly, informal way. The more effective methods of presenting
truth may be talked over, the thought method and the teaching method
of Jesus and Paul may be learned by a new and interesting study of
the New Testament. The literary and historical method of Bible-study
may be explained and the illumining discoveries of recent research
presented. Into such a class may be gathered not only those who are
already teaching, but those also who might be available for such service.
Call it a Biblical Research Club, call it a Normal Class, call it a Teachers'
Training Class, call it what you will, only let the result be gained that
a group of people bent on understanding the Word of God and knowing
how to teach it, shall meet under the competent leadership of their
minister and engage in the endeavor.
The mechanics of such a class meeting may be easily disposed of.
A small contribution from each member of the group will provide a
sufficient fund to make available the best periodicals in the varied
159
i6o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
departments of Bible-study. The members may be detailed for special
work, or the class divided into smaller groups, who will look up matters
of interest in exposition, excavation, in history or geography, criticism
and interpretation respectively, or work away in the field of child-study,
or teaching methods, and at each meeting new light will be brought,
new interest awakened, new enthusiasm engendered, and the whole
group enriched by the gifts of each. The meeting of such a class as
this may well displace an ineffectual Sunday night service, or find a
new place for itself in the midweek services, even at the sacrifice of
some meeting of the older type, for such a class will generate power
and make the teaching force of the church available and efficient.
A second field for pastoral leadership is in missionary study. In the
great majority of our churches the missionary work is relegated to the
women of the church. And yet the great enterprise of missions expects
to succeed by the offerings which prosperous, intelligent men will give
through the church treasuries. It has been found perfectly practicable
in one church to induce a large number of men to read missionary
biography. In one single season three dozen men were pledged to
read some thrilling life-story of a great missionary, and report his in-
spiration and impressions at a missionary concert. This is not a diffi-
cult task in any church. Let a missionary committee under the direction
of the pastor, in laying out a series of missionary meetings for the church,
plan to have half of them, at least, the presentation of the lives of as
many noted missionaries. Each biography may be divided among five
men, asked to read a few chapters and present a certain period of the
life. Few men will refuse such a request. By such a simple and
practical method the men of the church may be made enthusiastic for
missions, new and hitherto unheard voices will bring new power to the
public meetings, the whole church receive the impulse and the missionary
treasuries a marked increase in offerings.
A third field, even more promising than the other two, is among the
children. It will readily be granted that our modern secondary schools
do not impart a strong ethical impulse, nor give to our boys and girls
the instruction in morals which they deeply need. The intellectual
culture is ethically colorless. There is not time in the ordinary Sunday
school session for such instruction, except as it may be incidental to the
regular lesson. The homes are rare in which definite instruction in
the great Christian principles of conduct is given. Where, then, shall
our young mariners learn a true nautical code before they venture upon
perilous seas, unless their ministers, whom they know and love, come
totheir^aid ?
EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE PASTOR i6i
As to manifest results: (a) The opportunity such a class affords
for personal, immediate, and friendly intercourse with the children.
The hand of a friend most easily can lead another into the larger life.
Such conversational hours naturally induce an understanding and
frankness which the remote touch of the pulpit, or an occasional visit
to the Sunday-school, can never accomplish, (b) The opportunity
for co-operation with the home in influencing the spirit and temper
of the children. How can ministers and parents get together any more
readily than when their hearts are fused in the fires of a single inter-
est ? (c) The opportunity of really determining the moral code of a life
and settling his standards of conduct. When a minister faces his congre-
gation he is compelled to realize that his hearers are for the most part
so mature that their mode of life is settled, their standards
fixed, their principles and prejudices almost unalterable. He wonders
whether anything he can say will effectively transform their lives. But
he has no misgivings whatever when he teaches a class of children
between the ages of ten and fifteen, (d) Such teaching will be more
than ethical, because it is so Biblical and Christie. Confining the lessons
to the very words of Jesus awakens a personal interest in Him. He
seems so interested in child-life, to understand their needs so intimately,
that the conviction arises that Jesus Christ is a child's best friend, and
they come gradually to love Him, trust Him, and obey Him. The
children grow in grace as they increase in wisdom, and so by a natural
process of soul-culture under the influence of a present Christ they are
saved from the necessity of a cataclysmic experience. Religion is seen
to be a life, and its beginning and growth wrought in vital processes.
May I add a brief word of explanation about the mechanics of such
class-work? I have made and printed a lesson-slip each week, and
given this to the members of the class, with a blank book and two five-
cent Testaments, with the suggestion that they paste the lesson -slip
upon a left-hand page, and after cutting the verses of the lesson from
the Testaments, paste them on the opposite page, so that the children
acquire a method of study and produce by their own labor a hand-book
of Christie teaching which will be of lasting value to them.
It is a gratifying incident in such simple devices that an appropriate
employment is given to the Sunday afternoon hour and the " Pastor's
Class-book" has proved a help to the solution of the problem of Sunday
occupation for children.
i62 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Some of the Lesson-slips used by the Rev. Everett D. Burr,
D.D., IN His " Pastor's Class "
WHAT JESUS TEACHES ABOUT SPEECH
1. What did jesus say about the dignity and worth of
conversation ?
Matt. 5 : 34-37 5 : 21, 22 12 : 35-37
2. What did jesus talk about?
Luke 11:37-40 John 8 : 28, 38 12:49,50 7:46
3. Why and when did jesus refuse to speak?
John 19:7-9 Matt. 26:62,63 Mark 15 : 3-5 Luke 23 : 8-11
John 7 : 18
4. Did jesus give any definite standard of speech?
Matt 10 : 27 10: 19, 20 Luke 12:3 6 : 45 John 7 : 18
5. Would you feel comfortable if jesus should overhear
ALL you say?
6. What are some of the sins of speech?
Eph.4:3i I Peter 2 : I James4:ii Titus 3 : 21 Timothy 5:13
THE TEACHING OF JESUS ABOUT PLEASURE
Is there danger in pleasure ?
Luke 8 : 14
Did jesus condemn pleasure?
John 2 : I, 2 Luke 5: 29 John 12 : 2 Matt. 9:11 Luke 13:26
What did jesus condemn?
Matt. 6 : 19,23,25,28,31
What did jesus commend?
Matt. 18 : 1-3 6 : 16 Romans 15:3 Matt. 6 : 33
What is the greatest pleasure?
Phil. 2 : 13 John 3 : 17 John 8 : 29
THE TEACHING OF JESUS ABOUT DUTY
How did jesus define duty for himself?
Luke 2 : 49 John 9 : 4 Luke 24 : 26
How DID jesus define duty for us?
John 14 : 15 14 : 21-24 17 : 18
Are there many duties?
John 4 : 24 Luke 18 : i Matt. 23 : 23 25 : 14, 30 John 13 : 14
Matt 25 : 37-40
What is the impulse to duty?
Matt. 22 : 36-40 John 13 : 34
Is duty the measure of faithfulness?
Luke 17 : 10
' EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE PASTOR 163
The Pastor as an Educator
REV. CORNELIUS H. PATTON, D.D.
SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS,
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
The faithful pastor is one of the greatest, if not the greatest educa-
tional force in the community. But what is it to be faithful in this
matter ? This is an attempt to answer that question in respect to the
one work of preaching. In order to be educational in the high sense
of the word, preaching must be thorough, systematic, instructive, and
saving.
(i) First, — as to thoroughness. I refer to the intellectual process by
which a man thinks through his subject to the end. Once a week, at
least, the minister should lead his people to the fountains of knowledge
and persuade them to drink deep and full. If he cannot sound all the
depths of philosophy and science, he can at least trace his separate
theme to some fundamental conception, some accepted spiritual reality,
which will give his hearers the sense of solidity and strength, and send
them into the unstable world with a firm grip upon some great truth.
For a congregation once a week to be brought face to face with the
mysteries and problems of life, and to have their minds led to some
underlying principle of existence, is a process of great educational value,
— considered purely on its intellectual side. But when in this process
the preacher unfailingly links thought to revelation, and leads the mind
to rest in God and the divine realities as the ultimate solution of all that
vexes and perplexes us, it is an educational factor too great to allow
comparison. It is, par excellence, the educational influence in any
community. The preacher must, then, be thorough.
(2) He must also relate each truth he. presents to other truths; and
hence the preacher should be systematic. There must be progress and
system, if there is to be education. In this contention, however, we run
counter to the theory of many, and possibly to the tendency of the age.
The spirit of the age does not take to systematic thinking as kindly as
it does to the setting forth of detached truths. The great theological
works of past generations are laid on the shelf, not merely because they
are old, but also because they are systematic. Many hold that to be
systematic is to be dull; and hence arises the essay style of sermon,
the touch-and-go method on the one side, and the special doctrinal ap-
peal or the fad sermon on the other. Both methods are fatal to the
best educational effect.
(3) Kindred to the above is the demand for instructive preaching.
By this I mean informing preaching — preaching, which, by direction and
i64 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
indirection, by application and illustration, seeks to impart knowledge
as such. It has been said of the theory of evolution, that, without re-
gard to the essential truth or falseness of the theory, it has amply justi-
fied itself on the ground of the immense body of new facts in the natural
world it has served to bring to light. Similarly, the pulpit should
justify itself as an imparter of information. This is a more important
function than might at first be supposed. There are those who re-
mind us that the preacher no longer is the best educated man in the
community; that books, newspapers, magazines, and lectures have
taken the place of pulpit instruction; and hence the minister has lost
an important title to pre-eminence. It is not asserted, however, that
people to-day are particularly learned in religious things; that they
read theology or church history, or even study the Bible with new
zeal because of the increase of general intelligence and the opening of
new avenues for information. On the contrary, we are assured that
people have no time for these things. It would seem, then, that the
minister still has a function as an informer in religious matters. The
reading of the lesson from the pulpit Bible once a week; the exposition
of the more important parts of Scripture in courses of sermons (which
may well be the basis of every minister's preaching); the recital of
Scripture incidents; the quoting of passages, or allusions to well-known
truths of revelation, — these all have special value for the information
they convey. There are many men, and women too, who never hear
the Bible read except at church, who never know the power of religious
truth except as it is taught from the sacred desk. Nor need the infor-
mation be restricted to the Bible. A wise use, on the part of the preacher,
of church history, in the course of the years will acquaint the congrega-
tion with the leading scenes and facts in the record of God's spirit in
the world since the days of the apostles. The claims of Christ to
universahty, and the success of world-wide missions, would not be met
by doubt and unbelief in our churches if the ministers in their ser-
mons should draw liberally from that homiletical mine of wealth,
missionary history, and literature.
(4) Finally, preaching, to be truly educational, must be saving.
When a certain professor applied for a position in another institution,
the question was asked by a shrewd trustee, " Does he teach his
subjects, or his pupils ? " The same inquiry might well be made as
to a minister's method in preaching. Is his interest primarily in the
truth, or in the people who hear it?
The evangelist may come in for an important work, to arouse feeling
and induce decision ; but this will be of little value, and may even be a
EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE PASTOR 165
positive injury, unless the wider work of instruction has prepared the
way. Unless in the act of conversion the whole man is brought into
right relations to God, the experience is of questionable value. A
professor in one of our leading theological seminaries, upon my asking
as to what extent the students succeeded in adjusting themselves to the
newer historical attitude toward the Bible, replied that they had no
trouble with those students who had grown into the religious life by a
ripening experience. These, he found, held religion as a basic principle,
covering all parts of their nature, intellect, feeling, and will: But those
students whose religious experience was bounded by the emotions
which gave it birth at some instant in time, found it extremely diffi-
cult, if not impossible, to change their intellectual conceptions. This
observation is instructive, and suggests the value of a wider range for
investigation among our theological institutions.
In the same direction points an investigation the writer has recently
made as to the foreign missionaries who have gone out under the Amer-
ican Board. Among the questions we ask of appointees are these:
When and where were you hopefully converted ? Was it in a revival of
religion ? Between 1885 and 1895, 103 missionaries stated they were con-
verted in revivals, while 210 — more than double the number — stated
that their Christian life began unconsciously. In the next decade —
1895 to 1905 — 67 confessed a revival origin of their religious life,
while 187 said otherwise. For the past twenty years, out of 567
appointments, 170 were converted in revivals, and 397 not in revivals.
We have come almost to expect that candidates to-day will say, "I
do not know when I became a Christian. " The contrast of these
figures with those for the first twenty years of the Board is instructive.
Up to 1836, of the 97 missionaries whose life-memoranda we have, 59
were converted in a revival, and 38 not in a revival. These figures,
limited as they are, plainly indicate that the nurture idea of the
Christian life is gaining ground steadily in our midst.
Adequate Intellectual Expression of the People's Spiritual
Experience by the Pastor
REV. CHARLES S. MACFARLAND, Ph.D.
PASTOR MAPLEWOOD CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, MALDEN, MASSACHUSETTS
I believe my theme itself states the real w^ork of the pastor as a
teacher. The soul and its experiences are central, and the pastor's
finest work, as a teacher, is to provide for his people a fitting and
adequate intellectual expression of this experience.
Changes in thought have come in the classrooms of our seminaries
1 66 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
and in the thought of our preachers. But the intellectual result has
not yet been adequately given to the people in the churches. Clement
of Alexandria sets forth with clearness and explicitness the two dif-
ferent stages of truth which must be kept distinct — one for the priest,
the other for the people. Clement's not too honest advice has obtained
too much following down to our own day.
The real work of the preacher is to impart his own spiritual expe-
rience to his people by expressing it for them. It will not do for him to
arouse a spiritual experience in them and then leave them to speak
it in the unknown tongue of an inadequate formula. The new wine
calls for new bottles. Through the continuation of the Holy Spirit in
the Christian experience, Christ has been pouring out new wine upon
us. But we have left our people with the old wine-skins, and the skins,
have burst; intellectual confusion has resulted because of our failure to
provide new bottles for the new wine.
Does this mean that it is the function of the preacher to become an
iconoclast? To some extent, perhaps. Generally, however, the new
wine will of itself burst the old bottles. Our chief task is to provide
the new. Here is the point at which our younger men have wrought
confusion. They have broken the old bottles before they had pro-
vided the new ones.
Again it is not always the form of expression that needs to be
changed, but a reinterpretation that is needed. The religious expe-
rience goes on, but deepening from age to age, and its main forms re-
main the same. But every deepening in experience calls for a new
interpretation of the form. Thus, the preacher comes not to destroy
law and prophets, but to fulfill them. Such forms of expression as
Salvation, Conversion, Regeneration, Election, Inspiration, call to-
day, not for their burial, but for a reinterpretation.
This is the method with essential forms. When, however, persis-
tence of form is incompatible with the truer intellectual expression,
the delicate but peremptory duty of the preacher is to modify, or gen-
erally to expand, and sometimes to repudiate, the form. This conser-
vative, yet to some extent iconoclastic, method was Jesus's way with
regard to Jewish law.
For all this adjustment the people are dependent on the preacher.
The day of his note of authority must not be allowed to pass. They
must always, in large measure, have their thinking done for them, or
perhaps it is better to say, have their thoughts and experiences expressed
for them.
The day of such " religious authority " is not gone. " Science
EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE PASTOR 167
stands for truth." So docs the Holy Spirit, acting on and through the
reason. And it is true, ever has been true, and ever will be true,
worlds without end, that the effort of the human reason to know God
and the moral universe, to apprehend the moral magnitude and contem-
plate the spiritual force of Jesus Christ, is the supreme endeavor of
the human mind. And this is " theology." Religion without it is
like an ipfant crying in the night, and with no language but an inco-
herent cry.
A great body of our people need to be relieved of timorous tremblings
by being shown clearly on what true faith depends and where the spir-
itual life finds its sustenance; that the power of the Fourth Gospel
does not depend on the name or the date of its writer; that the power
of Christ in their lives to-day does not depend on miracles performed
2000 years ago; and that the naturalness of the spiritual order does not
take away the sweet comfort and the uplifting atmosphere of the
holy hour of prayer. That is to say, they need to see that faith rests
on the spiritual experience of which it is the expression and that the
reality of the experience does not depend on any given attempt at an
expression of it in intellectual forms. The superlative need is to
bring out in bold relief the essential articles of faith which are deter-
mined by the experience.
I am expressing to-day the feelings of the great body of the younger
men who are coming out of our seminaries. They are often placed in
trying situations. They find themselves speaking in an unknown
tongue. In the name of the Master I beg the older men to give them,
not cold and disdainful disparagement, but kindly^ caution and tender
advice. Some of them have lost their spiritual self-consciousness be-
cause they have been taught and made to believe that their newer
thinking unfits them for evangelization and deeply spiritual leadership.
Those who would be adequate to the situation are hampered by their
inefficient and self-sufficient brethren, who have a nondescript avalanche
of undigested truth and have by it wrought confusion in some near-by
parish.
I am dismayed by some of our ordaining and installing councils.
In the very age when clear thinking and deep study are thus demanded,
we are growing careless of these very things. Men are passed through
because of their amiable spirit and their good intent It is becoming
fashionable to report the absence of any theological paper or discussion
at such councils. We ought to demand a strong, comprehensive
scheme of doctrine, an ability to clothe the religious experience in worthy
intellectual garments.
i68 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
The light in the true preacher's soul is straight from heaven; his
is an immediate divine revelation to men; he is a man in whom his
uttered truth is realized; he leads men to a higher world; he pleads
with men. His medium is the spoken word, the intellectual expression
of these spiritual things. His preaching is the mind translating the
spirit into the language of reason.
My brethren in the ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ, called
to convey the eternal counsels of God which determine the moral des-
tinies of men, how great is our intellectual task: to search out the
unsearchable; to bring to men, through the mind, the vision of the
invisible; to express, in the language of reason, the inexpressible!
We need, more than aught else, ever and ever to pray the prayer of
Richard Baxter of Kidderminster: " Lord, do in our own souls that
which thou dost use us to do upon the souls of other men."
Discussion
REV. W. A. WOOD, A.M.
PASTOR METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SPENCER, MASSACHUSETTS
The educational aim of the pastor is the inspiration of life — the
highest possible ethical life. This was the aim of the Master of men.
Jesus said: " I have come that you may have life, and that you may
have it in abundance." Life is the main interest of the pastor in his
educational aims. Life is free. To promote life, the pastor must
fall in line with the trend of religious thinking in our time. One
marked element in that trend is the refusal to admit a purely external
authority in religion anywhere, and in the assertion that authority in
religion is internal, spiritual, ethical, moral, a matter of conscience,
a matter of experience. We are called into the presence of the spiritual.
Fundamentally, it is a contest of methods — the method of purely
external authority and the method of experience. The method of
external authority bases all judgment of truth upon the exte rnal marks
of its origin and the trustworthiness of those who promulgated it.
The method of experience puts us in immediate contact with reality,
and teaches us to judge of truth only according to its intrinsic value,
directly manifested to the mind in the degree of its evidence.
The experimental method destroyed the astrology and physics of
ancient days, but it created a new astronomy and a new physics. Why
should not the same method adopted by the pastor in his educational
aims have the same fecundating and rejuvenating effect? Purely
external authority is the right of the species over the individual. Self-
EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE PASTOR 169
direction is the right of the individual with regard to the species. The
moral consciousness does not appear at the beginning of evolution,
nor does it at any moment burst suddenly into being all luminous and
perfect. " It emerges slowly and laboriously from the night of nature."
The education of mankind is the passage from faith in purely ex-
ternal authority to personal conviction. Here, and here only, in per-
sonal conviction, is final authority. Authority which is purely exter-
nal tends to become neither reasonable nor disinterested. It ought
to be a guide, but it becomes blind. Tutelage becomes tyranny. The
past is continually struggUng for self -perpetuation against the future
which is sure to dawn. All history is a moral pedagogy, whose vitality
lives in this perpetual struggle between the autonomy of the conscience
and collective authority. Of this struggle are born all the problems
which civilized people to-day face.
In the educational aims of the pastor the Bible is his chief instru-
ment. For this it is admirably adapted, since it is a record of the
self-expression of God in human life, — a book of Hfe, — a great spir-
itual biology. The demonstration of the divinity of Scripture is an
inward revelation taking place in the consciousness at the moment of
reading and making the truth appear as the sunlight. We know that
light is light by the fact that it gives us light. Scripture must be left
to justify itself to the consciousness, for it has in itself the faculty of
showing its truth as things white or black show their color, as things
bitter or sweet show their flavor. There is nothing to oppose this
appeal to experience.
The Bible will ever be the book of power, the marvelous book, the
book above all others. It will ever be the light of the mind and the
bread of the soul. Neither the superstition of some nor the irreli-
gious negations of others will ever be able to do it harm. " If there
is anything certain in the world, it is that the destinies of the Bible are
linked with the destinies of holiness on the earth."
That which we must absolutely repudiate is an external authority.
The time has come for those who have broken with authority in their
inner life to break with it in their educational aims. The gospel, in
its very principle, implies the abrogation of external authority, and
inaugurates as a fact the religion of the spirit. The only ultimate
authority is the experience of God in the human soul. Jesus taught
as " One who had authority," just because in his soul and in the
souls of those who heard there was that special sanction which the
human conscience gives to truth, which the truth must have if it is to
appear divine and take possession of us.
I70 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
" If any man wills to do the will of the Father, he shall know of
My teaching whether it is from God." " It is before all else the vir-
tue, the efficacy of His Word, which gives him authority." His teach-
ing forces itself upon souls because it takes hold of them and sub-
jugates them as the truth itself does when it shows itself in its own
luminous evidence; as holiness and love do when, mingling in one,
they reveal themselves by the power of their own radiance. Every
sentence of Jesus has revealing power; is a ray from heaven just be-
cause the conscience welcomes it as a light essentially its own. His
words so incorporate themselves in the human conscience that it can
neither forget nor repudiate them without repudiating itself.
V. SUNDAY SCHOOLS
THE ANNUAL SURVEY OF SUNDAY SCHOOL PROGRESS
REV. PASCAL HARROWER,
CHAIRMAN SUNDAY SCHOOL COMMISSION DIOCESE OF NEW YORK, RECTOR CHURCH
OF THE ASCENSION, WEST NEW BRIGHTON, NEW YORK
Let me ask your attention to two lines of observation:
I. The Present Condition.
II. The Outlook.
I. The question of education is one of critical interest. In the bud-
get of any state or city or town, this item calls for the largest appropria-
tion. It is based on the fact that modern life cannot build itself upon an
ignorant proletariat. Increase your percentage of intelligence, and you
put the larger percentage of brain and thought into your life. De-
press it, and Russia with her tens of millions becomes the victim of
fate.
1. Deeper Regard for the Sunday School. — The conviction is steadily
deepening " that religious training is an integral part of education, that
in this country the state school does not and cannot include religious
training in its program." This is forcing the Sunday school " into a
position of great responsibility and importance, for it is in fact," as
President Nicholas Murray Butler has said, " a necessary part of the
machinery of our time." It may seem to some that this statement is
simply a description of the estimate placed upon the Sunday school
during the last twenty-five years. On the contrary, it has all the force
and value of a new estimate. The most encouraging fact in the present
condition is the seriousness with which men are discussing the problem
of religious education as education. And to-day there exists through-
out the educational world a new, and to many of us until recently an
unlooked-for, respect for the Sunday school.
2. A New Literature. The effect of this new regard has been seen
in the contributions to the problem of religious education of a large and
rapidly growing literature. Out of a list of 375 books bearing particu-
larly on moral education, nearly one third have been published since
the beginning of this century.' And besides these there is a large bibli-
ography dealing vdth other sides of the problem. The influence of this
literature is placing the Sunday school upon the same high ground with
' Griggs's Moral Education.
171
172 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
the university and the elementary schools. The same men are deal-
ing with both. And the inevitable result is, that the Church finds
herself in possession of an institution greatly elevated in its essential
claims.
3. Effect of This on Teacher-training. An important impetus
has thus been given to the work of teacher-training. One of the diffi-
culties in the way of raising the standard of teaching has been the in-
different value set upon the work.
It grew out of the actual conditions as they existed. There is much
truth in what B. F. Jacobs said: that " God had skimmed the cream
of the Church and put it into the Sunday school."
Possibly there are to-day in the United States three thousand teacher-
training classes. Now, it is right here that the influence of this increas-
ing literature is to greatly benefit the Sunday school. It is the most
hopeful element in the situation. It is creating an atmosphere favor-
able to the teacher. It is setting a high value on his work. This value,
furthermore, is set by men who bring to bear upon it the experience
and association of higher education. And we cannot overestimate
this fact. The Sunday school of the last generation was divorced from
all other schools. It moved in its own narrow sphere. It was limited,
therefore, in its range of thought. The teacher went to his class with-
out any conception of that larger fellowship which he may have to-day.
The present condition makes for the creation of higher ideals, and is a
distinct help to those in the Church who are working for better stand-
ards.
4. The Sex Factor in Teaching. A recent writer has called atten-
tion to the overwhelming proportion of female teachers in our public
schools. The same holds true of our Sunday schools. There can be
no doubt that for certain ages woman is the natural teacher of the child.
But it is equally certain that the child loses, who does not somewhere
in his educational course feel the touch of the man. It is well to re-
member that Christianity has from the first been the religion of the
world's strongest manhood. We must keep the boy of 17, through the
man of 30.
5. Lessons and Grading. There has no doubt been a distinct move-
ment towards the enlargement of the curriculum to include subjects
lying, strictly speaking, outside the Bible. This does not imply a lowered
estimate of the Bible, but it does imply the higher estimate of that human
life and history out of which the Bible was born, and to which it bears
perpetual witness.
Certain tendencies are therefore to be observed.
ANNUAL SURVEY OF SUNDAY SCHOOL PROGRESS 173
(i.) The Bible is being studied with a profounder sense of its utter
reality.
(2.) There is a growing feeling that the Bible must be studied less
in fragments and more as a whole.
(3.) In some churches there has been a definite effort towards some
system or course of study and the construction of manuals. The Pres-
byterian Church (South) has adopted a complete course of study for
its schools, by formal action of its General Assembly.
The Lutheran Church, while holding, in the main, to the Interna-
tional System, as does the Methodist, is finding itself obliged to modify
this in the interest of a more careful grading in the primary and advanced
departments.
Many of the leading denominations report an effort to grade their
schools, but in only two' or three cases does this grading go beyond the
adaptation of the uniform system by means of graded lesson-treatment.
The Episcopal Church has never used the International System,
but the Joint Diocesan Lessons, modeled on the International, but
recognizing the Christian year, have been used in the large majority
of parishes. Besides this system, there have been used a great variety
of manuals, so that the condition of instruction is most unsettled. In
I goo the idea of a subject-graded curriculum was advocated as a nat-
ural sequence of child-study, and the adaptation of the subject-matter
of religious education to the child's development. Suggested curricula
were put forth. A study of over thirty subject-graded schemea used
in various schools showed a remarkably general agreement, indicat-
ing that the main outline hit upon was psychologically and pedagog-
ically sound.
The manuals set forth by this commission are at least valuable a«;
a beginning. Certainly, it cannot be supposed that they represent an
ideal, but they may point the way towards text-books that shall more
worthily meet the requirements of religious education.
Much is involved in any radical and sweeping changes. The Inter-
national or Uniform Lessons are too strongly intrenched in the tradi-
tions and honest preferences of a vast majority of our Sunday schools,
and have played too important a part in the last generation , to be easily
set aside. But even in this great system, under its earnest and inspir-
ing leaders, there has been an effort made to adjust and harmonize its
uniformity with the best educational principles. Meanwhile, existing
systems, like the International, the Blakeslee, and the Joint Diocesan,
are steadily seeking to improve the quality of their work.
6. Large Organization. There is a marked tendency towards
174 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
more careful organization of the school and the church. The individual
school here and there may be highly organized, and it is probably true
that every successful school is managed v^ith thoroughness. But this
is not the common condition, and this tendency to bring every school
into closer corporate union with all other schools is a most important
feature.
I desire to call attention to the practical importance of organization
within each denomination. An interesting movement is now starting
in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Every presiding elder is urged
" to make himself familiar with the modern Sunday school, and so be
able to inspire his pastors with enthusiasm, to hold frequently Sunday
school institutes in his district, grouping several churches, and bringing
together pastors, and superintendents, and teachers for the discussion
of practical problems concerning their work." Lists of subjects are
given for such conferences, and a carefully selected list of helpful and
inspiring books. Every school is urged to provide itself with a full
library of the best books covering all phases of the subject.
At the last General Convention of the Episcopal Church, a joint-
commission on Sunday school Instruction was appointed with a view
to a thorough investigation of the matter. Some forty diocesan com-
missions or organizations already exist. This movement is developing
the more elaborate organization of each diocese, through its archdea-
conin and deanerin. This same demand for more detailed organiza-
tion is being felt in other communions also. The effort to knit
together in firm, corporate life the schools of each denomination is
highly important.
One of the greatest contributions made by the International Lesson
Committee to the religious life of our time has been this bringing to-
gether of those churches using their lessons.
7. Sunday School Exhibits. The exhibit, as presented during this
convention, contains full specimens of Sunday-school apparatus, liter-
ature, and methods of teaching as used by Protestants, Romanists and
Jews. The value of such exhibits is at once conceded. One great
exhibit' already embraces over 10,000 individual helps, including almost
every article demanded in Sunday school equipment. It is hoped
that this special exhibit can be enlarged into a complete museum, rep-
resenting the evolution of Sunday school methods for the last fifty years.
Meanwhile, other exhibits have been started elsewhere. Every great
center of Sunday school influence should possess some such collection.
It is of the greatest educational value and helpfulness.
'New York Sunday School Commission Exhibit, 2q Lafayette Place.
ANNUAL SURVEY OF SUNDAY SCHOOL PROGRESS 175
The development of manual work in the Sunday school, as seen in
map-modeling, map-drawing, and models of Oriental utensils, houses,
etc., is of great importance. And the large exhibit, or the model, or
exhibit-room of the individual school, is destined to play an important
part in the religious education of the future.
II. In closing, I desire to call attention to several things which bear
more particularly on the future.
1. The Home. The religious life of the past quarter of a century
has seen a distinct decline in the religious life of the home. The pres-
ent indication seems to point to better things. Two immediately pro-
ductive causes for this improvement are the Cradle-roll and the Home
Department. These work upon the finer sentiments of parents and
children. They produce their results less by direct exhortation than
by the creation of interest and appeals to the spiritual imagination.
2. Week-day Lessons. It is a question already asked, and destined
to come more to the front in future, whether an effort should not be
made to secure a week-day session of the Sunday school. Some ar-
rangement may be found by which the children can be assembled in
grades, on different days, and so brought under more careful instruction.
In most parishes the pastor is to-day too little in touch with his chil-
dren. Some such departmental work on week-days might lead to a
real enrichment of the Sunday worship in behalf of children.
3. Finally, the Spiritual Life of the Child. I am not here speaking
of the evangelizing work of the school. The period of personal religious
interest, the espousal of Christ, whether we associate it with Decision
Day, or with Confirmation and First Communion, is never to be for-
gotten. Granted this, I have in mind something that this only empha-
sizes — and that is worship.
The Sunday school has sometimes been called the children's church.
And in a vast number of cases it has been practically the only church
the child knew, and the teacher the only preacher. But that this de-
scribes the Sunday school in any true sense cannot be allowed.
The school is not the church. School prayers are not worship in
any other sense than private devotion may be called worship. The
Sunday school prayer should lead to and train for the service of the
church. Much has been written on the child at study. We must
turn our attention to the child at worship. The two things are distinct
operations of the soul. If our school lessons are to be made pedago-
gically sound, our hymns and prayers and ceremonies of worship must
be made equally true to the child.
Religion must not miss the ministry of beauty and form, and the
176 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
reverent play and expression of rich and holy ceremonies of worship
belong by right to the child.
My plea is for the child and his right to the richest heritage our
Christian faith can bring into his life. For human nature is older
than any one church or any one point of view, and let us remember
that though each child passes on, yet the child is ever with us. We
may well take up, therefore, this comparatively untrodden field of in-
vestigation, and ask how we can best lead the child, through worship,
into the presence of his Father, and, if necessary, how we can adjust
our older and fixed formulas of worship to the needs of that earlier
age.
THE CHURCH'S PROBLEM OF THE RELIGIOUS EDUCA-
TION OF ITS PEOPLE
PROFESSOR IRVING F. WOOD, Ph.D.
SMITH COLLEGE, NORTHAMPTON, MASSACHUSETTS
The Church has two duties. One is the duty of instruction. Chris-
tianity and Judaism both rest upon an intelligent grasp of certain prin-
ciples which make their appeal to the intellect. These are embodied,
not only in lives, but in books, and especially in The Book. They must
be studied. The second duty is that of inspiration. The Church must
inspire men so to relate these principles to their lives that they shall no
longer lie without, but within, — a part of life itself. It is essentially the
evangelistic, the spiritual. The problem is, How is the church to fulfill
these two functions under the present conditions?
The recognition of the function of inspiration is old and familiar.
Never, perhaps, was it more emphasized than in this country for the
past 150 years. A vast congeries of agencies sprang up to fulfill it;
in the non-liturgical churches the continuous ministrations of the pulpit
and the prayer-meeting were supplemented by the intermittent ministry
of the revival. In the liturgical churches the continuous influence of the
ritual was and is relied upon. Then came in the Sunday school, and
the religious instinct seized upon it as still another means of religious
inspiration. Its instructional character was made distinctly secondary
to its religious.
Here lies the problem. For us, inspiration is the old and familiar
function of the Church. Instruction is the new. The old has its chan-
nels well worn, but the stream in them is sometimes narrower than one
could wish. The new will soon be a full flood, with few well-worn
channels in which it can flow. How can we turn this new flood
into the old channels ? How can we so use the instruction upon which
the Church will, we believe, lay great stress in the near future, so that
it shall increase rather than diminish the power of the Church for in-
spiration? How shall we absorb the new partial truth, and not let the
old partial truth go?
Let us recognize, in the first place, how very far apart these two func-
tions of the Church are. Inspiration cannot be gained by instruction,
nor can instruction be gained by inspiration. To try to mingle the two
in one operation is to invite the faflure of both. Probably the funda-
mental difficulty with the Sunday school has lain at this point. The
177
178 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
same half-hour has been expected to yield results in two entirely different
fields, and naturally the actual issue has been too little result in either.
The method of the jumble of the two has had a fair trial, and has failed,
as one might have expected it would. We cannot find the solution of
the problem in this direction.
The first step toward the solution of the problem, then, is the clear
recognition of the analysis of its elements. Religion cannot be taught.
There are things which can be taught, and which the church must teach.
Stories about the men of the Bible can be taught in such a way as to
illustrate moral and religious truths. The Hfe of Jesus can be taught
in such a way as to bring the pupil into contact with the divine power
of that hfe. The thoughts and feelings of religious men can be taught
as they have expressed themselves in the Bible. But when we turn to
religion itself, the instructional function disappears and the function
of inspiration takes its place.
A second step toward the solution of our problem lies in the recog-
nition of the fact that the human mind is not made up of water-tight
compartments. These two functions of which I have been speaking
are totally and radically different. Different methods must be em-
ployed for the fulfillment of each, and yet one influences the other. In-
struction, rightly done, yields results which inspiration may take up and
use.
From this a third step follows. It is the Church's business so to in-
struct that such results may be available for inspiration. It ought to
do this, no matter what the subject of teaching. If the church teaches
reading to a Chinese, or sanitation to a mothers' club, it ought to regard
that work, so far as it is church work, as absolute failure unless it yields,
not religious inspiration itself, but seme result which religious inspira-
ation may take hold of and use.
The Sunday school is, on the whole, however, most advantageously
placed in regard to this matter. Its subject of study is the Bible. Now,
it is impossible to study the Bible from any point of view — lower criti-
cism, higher criticism, literary, historical, or any other — without finding
one's self at some time in the course of the study in the presence of
great, inspiring, spiritual truths. The keenest, most intellectual study
leads up to that, as well as the devout reading of the humblest disciple.
But now we face the heart of the problem. It is not theoretical, but
practical. How shall we translate instruction into inspiration ? Where
is our transformer, to change the current from one potential to another?
There are no means in full operation at present that are at all adequate
to do it. To use the clerical term we want a good transformer.
THE CHURCH'S PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 179
There are, however, several means in germ which may perhaps
later develop into something of real use. One is the present insistence
on continuity and proportion in the Sunday school study of the Bible.
It is plain to see that the future will insist more than the past has done
on the larger divisions, rather than the smaller, in Bible study, on books
and periods of history and groups of literature. This will reduce the
tendency to make every lesson convey a separate and distinct religious
teaching. Often one must work through a book or a period, the labor
perhaps of a long series of lessons, before the results which religion can
use become available. Then they appear naturally, and take their
proper place in the structure of Biblical religion. If all the present
discussion of method and curriculum will result in this, it will be a
great gain.
Another element in the possible solution of the problem is the use
of special seasons for — let me use the old-fashioned word — spiritual
ingathering. Decision day is such a season. The occasional pastor's
class during Lent, or at any other time in the year, is another. Of course
there is need of wisdom in arranging and carrying out such plans. The
particular advantage of their connection with the Sunday school is
that thus they naturally invite a recognized relation between instruction
and inspiration. In general, the pastor's place in the Sunday school
has not been used to its full value. All the traditions of the pastorate,
and, usually, the experience of his work, make him the person, above
all others, who might be able to translate instruction into inspiration.
How it may be done each pastor must work out for himself. He, at least,
has a free field, and is not hampered by traditional methods.
Possibly, the opening and closing exercises of the school can, in some
cases, be made to have a definite religious value. At present, it is
doubtful whether they commonly have any value at all. They seem
to be held because it is customary to hold them. They ought to have
a value for the instruction, if for nothing else. But they can never be
relied upon to supply the entire means of reHgious inspiration. They
are too short, too much dominated by the spirit of instruction, which
should rule the Sunday school lesson itself.
Can the Sunday school be so managed as to inculcate a spirit of
reverence? It deals with a religious subject. There seems to be no
reason why it should not be conducted as reverently as 'the church service.
I ask in all seriousness. Can you expect a confused, undignified hubbub
to yield results which religious reverence can use ?
i8o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
REV. J. T. McFARLAND, D. D.
EDITOR SUNDAY SCHOOL PUBLICATIONS OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
NEW YORK CITY
The church's problem of the religious education of its people con-
sists of two factors: First, furnishing the people with adequate instruc-
tion in the facts and principles of morality and religion; and second,
giving them needed guidance in the moral and religious activities of
their lives; and both of these to the end that moral and religious devel-
opment may be effected and Christian character formed. Upon this
problem, in both of its phases, the Church has always been engaged,
and has done and is doing much.
But the Sunday school is at great disadvantage as respects the pos-
sibility of securing high efficiency on the part of its teachers, because
of the short time to which its work is confined. The majority of the
public school teachers never had any direct normal training; by ex-
perience in the schoolroom and by association with more experienced
teachers, they have learned how to teach. But the teacher in the public
school has an opportunity for practice in teaching far beyond the teacher
in the Sunday school, for his work covers six hours a day for five days
in the week, while the Sunday school teacher has really but about thirty
minutes a week. Thirty hours against thirty minutes is a wide differ-
ence. If we will consider the literature of the Sunday school for the
teaching of the current Bible lessons, we are impressed with its redun-
dancy rather than its poverty. An excellent guidance has been provided
in methods of teaching also. The Bible teacher at least has put within
his easy reach the means for acquiring a knowledge of the principles
of pedagogy as applied to his work. So that we may safely affirm, in
spite of all imperfections and deficiencies, that the great defect of the
Church does not lie in a lack of properly prepared material for religious
instruction, nor chiefly in an inefficient, because untrained, teaching
force.
The great defect in our whole system of religious education lies in
a radical oversight or omission; namely, the failure to perceive that
moral and religious education must include moral and religious action,
and that it is the duty of the Church not simply to give direction to
the work of instruction, but to give direction to the activities of those
under its care as well. In entering, some nine months ago, upon my
office as editor of the Sunday school literature of my church, I deter-
mined to do something towards strengthening the work of the Sunday
school at what I consider its weakest point. That point of weakness
is almost a break in the chain, so almost entirely has it been overlooked
THE CHURCH'S PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION i8i
so far as any systematic provision for the need is concerned — the mis-
sing hnk, namely, that should connect instruction and activity in the
process of education. The very thought of the necessity of this link
has been almost wholly overlooked. I therefore introduced into our
Sunday school Journal and Bible Student's Magazine, as a regular part
of the lesson helps, a department which I call " The School of Practice."
In explanation I quote from my editorial introduction of this depart-
ment.
" Our purpose in ' The School of Practice ' is to help the teachers
in our Sunday schools to give some current guidance to the moral and
religious activities of the members of their classes. It raises the question,
' In view of the truth of the lesson, what practical things ought we to
do during the coming week in fulfillment of that truth ?' It enables the
teacher at the close of each lesson to say to the class, ' Well, now, we
have learned such and such truths from the lesson to-day; now, what
immediate use can we make of these truths ? How can we carry them
out during the week? What shall we do?' And then, having raised
these questions, not to leave the whole matter indefinite, but to go for-
ward and put the members of the class upon specific lines of moral and
religious practice. The constant word should be, ' We have learned;
now let us do.' For, otherwise our knowledge will condemn us. "
The recognition of the fact that " That which is not expressed dies,"
should startle us when we consider what for the most part we are
doing in our Sunday schools. We have been absorbed in the task of
instruction. We have considered that we have fulfilled our mission
when we have conveyed moral and religious knowledge to the children
and youth of our schools. We have used the best obtainable helps for
teaching and have done our utmost to rightly guide the thinking of
our scholars. But we have not made any systematic attempt to guide
their activities. Sabbath after Sabbath we have brought forward some
of the great truths of the Bible, and we have not taken pains to in-
quire whether those truths have been carried out into the activities of
the days lying between the Sabbaths. The result has been that thou-
sands of our young people have become over-loaded with a surfeit of
unemployed knowledge, and have acquired a habit of regarding truth
indifferently as a thing to be given passive attention and forgotten.
We should bring ourselves up to the recognition of this — that it is
not a pious thing to come together and talk about truth and duty
without any purpose or plan to obey the truth and perform the duty
that may be presented to us. So far from this being pious and relig-
ious, it may be, and I think often is, impious and irreligious.
i82 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
PRESIDENT WILLIAM DOUGLAS MACKENZIE, D. D.
HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
Self-criticism is one of the conditions of spiritual growth, alike in
the individual and in the community. It is a law of our nature that
we attain our ideals only through dissatisfaction with our present spiritual
possessions. The Church, to-day, in facing the problem of the educa-
tion of its people, is exercising afresh its duty of self-criticism. It
has been made to feel that its work is not as thoroughly done as it ought
to be, and that weakness results on various sides of its life through
this failure.
There are those who occupy a peculiar position to-day by at once
urging rehgious education and yet affecting to despise the teaching of
religious truth. It is true that they mask the latter under the term of
doctrine, or throw scorn upon it by the use of the epithet " dogma";
but we must face the fact that there is no teaching of religion that does
not imply the inculcation of certain conceptions of God and of Christ
and of the way of salvation. We are not able to live our life without
laying hold of truth. We are rational beings, and it is through the exer-
cise of our reason that we discover at once our task, our relations, and
our destiny. In our day the attempt to get people to be religious will
utterly fail unless we tell them what it is to be religious; and that can
only be done by winning their belief in certain great facts and their
place in the history of the race and of the individual man. Over against
a skepticism that sweeps away the truth of the Scriptures we present the
reality of that sublime revelation which God has made through them
to the whole race. Over against materialism which infests our social
life and penetrates like a deadly miasma into our churches, and even
paralyzes some good men in the pulpit, the Church must set the reality
and glory of the spiritual. Now, to do all this implies that people must
use their intellects in order to be Christian, and that other people must
use a great deal more intellect in order to instruct them. As a matter
of fact, we find that wherever there is a teaching ministry which
knows what to teach and how to teach, there we find a solid faith
among the people, and a fervent response to every true religious
appeal.
This work must begin among the children. They are being taught,
in many parts of the country, in the pubhc schools that they must be
" good," and there a great deal of very useful moral instruction is given,
and some valuable influences by earnest teachers are exercised. But it is
curious that intelligent people do not see that exactly in this way they
have not only not avoided sectarian teaching, but have actually adopted
THE CHURCH'S PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 183
the teaching of the meanest and poorest sect in the country. The people
who call themselves Secularists, who send to us ministers stupid tracts,
printed badly, on poor paper, in bad grammar, are those who have as
loudly as any shouted against sectarian teaching in the public schools.
Now, their doctrine is that it is possible for men to be good without God;
and it is their doctrine which, by the avoidance of the name of God, is
being taught in a good many public schools. There is here a loud call
of the Church to exercise every endeavor to bring home, even to little
children, the fundamental message of Jesus, that " there is none good
save one; that is God only." But this means that the Religious Edu-
cation Association is charged, through its Sunday School Department
with the task of rousing everywhere a passionate determination that
this Secularist poison shall spread no further, and that somehow chil-
dren shall receive the great message that God must be known and loved
if men would be good.
I believe that in relation to the children the churches ought, in larger
number and with more efl&ciency, to attempt the giving of religious in-
struction in connection with the Bible schools on week-days. I know
that some denominations already succeed in a very creditable measure
in doing this. A large number of Lutheran ministers find it possible,
during the holiday season as well as at other times, to gather their
children for parts of one or two week days and give them sound con-
secutive teaching in Christian history, Christian doctrine, and the
life and meaning of the Church. If this is done still more than at present,
it will enable our churches to emphasize the religious side in their Sunday
work. They will gather the children distinctively for worship. It will
be felt, that if a child is being well taught in the history of Israel, or in the
details of the life of Paul, during the week, on Sunday his attention must
be fastened upon the great spiritual lessons ; that his heart may worship
the livinff God.
Discussion
REV. LEMUEL CALL BARNES, D.D.
PASTOR FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS
First, the only problem which we ought to be discussing at this
particular hour is " The Church's Problem of the Religious Education
of Its People " through the agency of the Sunday school.
This involves, however, at the outset, the fact that the Sunday
school is utterly inadequate to the religious education of the people,
even the church people, to say nothing of the community as'a whole.
The Sunday school is not only inadequate as it is now constituted; it
i84 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
will be hopelessly inadequate when it has been brought to that state
of perfection toward which this Sunday School Department of the
Religious Education Association is to help it to come. The live church
has already at least five well-developed organs of religious education;
first of all, the Christian Home; second, the Pulpit; third, the Woman's
Association; fourth, the Men's League; and fifth, the Young People's
Society. A number of other functions of healthy life are evolving
organs for their expression. We have boys' work, girls' work, lecture-
course work, and many more kinds of religious educational work.
In the second place, therefore, our problem is so to specialize the
work of the Sunday school that it shall have the clearness and sharp-
ness of purpose, the intensity of interest, and the incisiveness of impact
which belong to a specialty. What shall be its one aim? Shall it
be to impart a knowledge of the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures? The
tendency to call it a Bible school perhaps points in this direction.
If it tried to do nothing else, might not its religious outcome be great-
est? Could we not trust that unrivaled and supernal literature to do
its best work when left to itself? Is it not possible that we blunder
educationally in putting many things in our one hour a week between
the Holy Spirit's matchless work and the pupil's spirit? Whether
all evangelistic, indoctrinating, and inspirational work, as well as all
other educational work, might well be left to other organs of the church,
is a real question. At any rate, even if not exclusive of other things,
the one dominating specialty of the Sunday school must ultimately
be the study, the actual study, of the Sacred Writings.
Third, when the purpose of the Sunday school has been clarified,
the next factor in the solution of our problem will be the method of
teaching. The method which has prevailed for the most part is the
sermonette method. In the average Sunday school class self-activity
on the part of the pupil has been at a minimum, oftener at zero. In
all other educational institutions, from the kindergarten to post-
graduate fellowships, the principle now mainly depended upon is
" learning by doing." Instead of coming into the Sunday school last,
it ought to have come into it first, because it is pre-eminently the method
of Christian education, as the great Teacher himself said.
The Sunday school teachers who have been most effective have
always been those who got the pupils to doing something about the
lessons themselves. The simple written answers of the Bible Study
Union lessons have been an immeasurable good to hundreds of
pupils.
Fourth, having obtained a clear purpose and a right method, we
THE CHURCH'S PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 185
should be ready for the most important factor of all in the solution
of our problem namely, the training of teachers.
Then should come a fifth factor; i. e., Sunday school equipment.
Not one Sunday school in ten thousand at the present time has the
rooms and appliances which are desirable, if the very best work is to
be done.
Whatever we may think of these five factors, or of any other way of
analyzing the problem, the one inspiring thing about the whole matter
at the present time is the fact that we have discovered that there is
a problem, a tremendous problem, awaiting solution. We have the
joy of working in a situation where the best things are all in front of
us, to be growingly discovered, growingly appropriated, and grow-
ingly put into fruitful service.
CLARA BANCROFT BEATLEY
PRINCIPAL OF DISCIPLES SCHOOL, CHURCH OF DISCIPLES, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
The problem of the education of the religious sentiment of the people
of the Church will be solved as the Church succeeds in providing for
the growing life within its care, a continuity of high spiritual influence
and instruction.
The children of the Church are its most important care. In the solv-
ing of no other problem may it more truly be said, " A little child shall
lead them."
A forward step has been taken by churches in establishing kinder-
gartens during the hour of church-service. The home is thus strength-
ened at the time of its greatest need. The formation of the stay-at-home
habit, the self-centering of family life, the gradual lowering of spiritual
ideals — these insidious dangers are all averted by the foresight of the
Church. While the children are happily cared for in the kindergarten,
parents may be constant in church attendance and be helped from week
to week into a growing appreciation of the home ideal.
A nursery, in some instances, accompanies the kindergarten. One
may well believe that hymn and prayer, and every spoken word, will
glow with new significance as the thought of the sleeping child and the
happily playful child, intelligently cared for in the church nursery, sug-
gests in quiet undertone the gospel message.
A church that secures the constant attendance of the parents of
young children implants its message in willing minds and receptive
hearts, — minds and hearts recently elevated and chastened by the near-
ness of mystery and the joy of life's richest experience. No church
can afford to lose the opportunity to touch the homes thus quickened
i86 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
to new consciousness of duty. The old custom of taking very young
children to the church has given way to its deplorable opposite. The
child is brought to the church to be christened, and may not again
appear until he enters the primary department. The parents, mean-
while, unconsciously lower their standard of church attendance, appear-
ing for service only at Christmas and at Easter, or at other convenient
intervals.
The school which the church establishes should provide, through
carefully chosen services, an atmosphere of reverence in which all lovely
quahties take root. A graded system of instruction, presided over by
trained teachers, leads the child step by step into a knowledge of his
spiritual inheritance. He catches the enthusiasm for truth and service.
He reaches out in loyalty to the church that has shown him the blessed
way; he rejoices in the crowning experience of acknowledging his re-
lationship.
Through the growing vision of the past, the ideal of a school asso-
ciated with every church, has been constantly unfolding. Many have
consecrated their lives to this ideal. There have been periods of emi-
nent leadership and glowing attainment. It remains for the Church
to provide the conditions of sustained leadership and attainment. A
volunteer service becomes daily more di£&cult. The Church itself has
created the philanthropic agencies that increase the call for volunteer
workers at every hand.
Continuity of guidance, trained teachers, an established school curric-
ulum that provides for recognition of the child's progress, — these are
the great needs in the church to-day. To fulfill these needs is to inspire
the confidence and loyalty of parents and secure the elements of stability
and permanence essential to a successful school.
In planning for the establishment of a graded school, certain truths
are evident :
1. The choice of a trained service and a graded system does not
imply the failure of other methods. It recognizes the good already
attained, while it seeks a higher good.
2. A trained service may be a volunteer service.
3. A trained service may be the service of such day-school teachers
as have special aptitude for religious teaching — teachers whose po-
sitions are reasonably secure, through successful experience, and who
welcome the Sunday class as a joy. To such teachers the compensation
may give means of vacation travel, or other recreation, so that the re-
pair of nervous energy may be equal to the demand.
4. Teachers who are insecure in their daily work, who are over-
THE CHURCH'S PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 187
whelmed by unfavorable school conditions, who have not acquired the
serenity of conscious power, or who have heavy responsibilities out of
school hours, should not be urged to Sunday teaching. I infer that
President Hyde has this class of teachers in mind, when he so reason-
ably points out the wrong of pressing day-school teachers into Sunday
service.
5. Trained service, again, may be that of a mother whose contact
with child-life in the home, added to a successful experience as a teacher,
makes her pre-eminently a leader of the young.
6. A graded system may be introduced so gradually that the
transition may occasion no disturbance.
7. Day-school methods should only be introduced as they har-
monize with the spirit of the Church and clearly make for efficiency.
8. The minister, freed from the disappointments of an uncertain
teaching service, touches the school at his highest spiritual power, and
becomes, above all, the true preacher and prophet, ministering to the
souls^of his'people.
PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING THE SUNDAY SCHOOL
CURRICULUM
MR. PATTERSON DU BOIS
PHILADELPHIA
Time being short, I took such a luncheon to-day as I thought would
most quickly serve me best. It was an oyster stew. When the bowl
was set before me, an initial taste revealed the need of salt. I raised my
eyes, saw the salt in the distance, but gave no other sign. A stranger
had the instinct to see my necessity, reached the needed article and set
it before me. To myself I said, " I like your curriculum."
It was only a second or two long, but it taught me to discern, to feel,
and to act in response to my neighbor's needs. Scripture texts came
to mind as a Christly sanction. We complain that our time is too short
in Sunday school to teach much. This stranger gave me a life lesson
in two seconds. It is our business to do the most possible in the time
that we have. Here is a point for teacher-training as well as Sunday
school teaching.
Last summer I visited the old village of Brading, in the Isle of Wight.
Here is the -ancient church where Leigh Richmond ministered a cen-
tury and more ago. Here is the churchyard where, under a spreading
tree, he held his class of little girls, to whom he taught the theology of
those days, as well as Bible passages, catechisms, and hymns for mem-
orizing. Death was a more important consideration to the Christian
then than life. was. The tombstones by which this class was surrounded
served to create the desired atmosphere and to point the gloomy ideal.
The children were actually made to memorize epitaphs. Little Jane's
parents were irreligious and wicked. The tract which Leigh Richmond
wrote, describing the child's progress toward a beautiful, unselfish Chris-
tian character, was famous in the past century. The last sickness and
death of Jane at the age of about fourteen is touchingly told. It pictures
her concern for her parents and associates, her serene faith, her supreme
comfort in her hymns, her Bible, and the theological interpretations as
she had taken them from her teacher's lips.
I asked myself whether the pendulum of our day had swung too far
away from these almost hysterical manifestations of a past era. Have
we pursued the rational and the so-called " practical " too hotly to the
neglect of the emotional?
Again, suppose Jane had been born in a similar poverty in a great
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL CURRICULUM 189
twentieth-century city. She would be compelled to seek self-support,
minghng with many persons of doubtful conduct, possibly serving em-
ployers with whom she would become tributary to or even principal in
sharp practices in the struggle for existence. Would the purely theo-
logico-sentimental curriculum of the old graveyard have so cultivated
her moral discernment as to keep her as straight and serenely beautiful
in character as she was in that remote village ? Is not the stress of our
industrial, commercial, and poHtical life of to-day dulhng what moral
discrimination we think we have? I believe that the dishonorable de-
fections of Christians who suppose that their ideals are high are due
largely to want of training from childhood in concrete ethical discrim-
ination. There is a larger place for this in the Sunday school curricu-
lum than the mere casual side issues of the average teacher. And this
means an important item in the teacher's training also.
But that Jane's intimacy with Bible texts and sacred songs was an
infinite solace and delight to her in her last days cannot be doubted.
Have we not in this also swung too far away from the memory treasures
of our fathers? Notwithstanding the austerities of the indoctrination
of that day, it is noteworthy that the Brading class was held in a beau-
tiful spot outdoors, and that the surroundings were valued as accessory
suggestion. Richmond himself claimed that there was value in the
sweetness of nature, as well as in the solemnity of gravestones. If for
these melancholy reminders of death we substitute the agencies and
ideals of life, we have restored something of that effective method and
applied it to a more Christlike purpose. We have made for life abun-
dantly, instead of death superabundantly. Therefore let us have more
of what might, by a kind of courtesy or liberal use of the term, be called a
laboratory method. Let us not stop with the Bible, but, as Paul has said
that all things are ours, draw on all resources — books, nature, and hu-
man life in its manifold social complexity. Suppose your boys or girls
were to report on incidents or cases involving ethical discrimination or
religious attitude which they had witnessed or to which they were a
party. Suppose, also, that the rights and wrongs, the advantages and
disadvantages, growing out of such deeds and situations were referred
back to Biblical cases or precepts, somewhat as a physician or lawyer
goes to his library for precedents and authorities. We might then have
a closer connection between the school and life. Even though without
" apparatus," we should have the laboratory idea.
Then, too, we should have more of the missionary element. But
we must not confine this to the contribution of money to Church
" boards." If there are grave disclosures of vice in the city, and an
I90 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
effort is making to root it out in spite of political protection, your boy
and girl should see that the Church, as an institution, is taking a hand
in the process of purification. He or she should not think missionary
effort is confined to the distant and the invisible, or that the Church
has no interest in the near and the immediate. " Forward movements"
should concern our back alleys as well as Corea.
Lastly, let the curriculum be large, proceeding by wholes, offering
as little temptation as possible to the teacher for petty homily or for
breaking up a good story into insipid bits. Let it include the exemplary
fascination of biography — of human character in the concrete.
This desultory discussion makes no pretense to the form of a cur-
riculum. I have said nothing about the Bible as the supreme text-book,
as the book of life and of lives, because I assume that we are already
agreed upon that. I simply remind the curriculum-maker of five motifs
— a proper affection, a moral discrimination, a memoriter treasury, a
missionary conscience, and a broad view.
REV. F. N. PELOUBET, D.D.
AUTHOR PELOUBET'S SELECT NOTES ON THE INTERNATIONAL SUNDAY SCHOOL
LESSONS, AUBURNDALE, MASSACHUSETTS
In the light of as wide a study of published curricula, and of books
on child-study, as broad an observation and experience, and as full a
conference with educators as have come within my limits, I would lay
down as scientifically correct the following principles:
First. It is an axiom that the curriaihim must he adapted in both ma-
terial and method to the varying stages of mental development and religious
growth of the pupils. It was well said at our Philadelphia meeting,
that " No one who has studied both the Bible and the child can believe
that all parts of the Bible have an equally high culture value at every
stage of development."
Second. A really scientific curriculum must take into account all the
factors of the problem, and refuse to overemphasize any one factor at the
expense of the others. There are several factors which are frequently
ignored, or allowed too meager an influence; so that while the curricula
are scientific in some directions, as in the psychology of the child, they
are unscientific in not giving due weight to other essential elements in
the actual working out of the problem.
Some neglected factors. The limit of time in the Sunday school, one
half hour a week. It is absolutely impossible within that limit of time
to utilize a curriculum for the entire religious education of the child,
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL CURRICULUM 191
without a miracle. Such a curriculum would be a wise educational
measure, but not a wise Sunday school curriculum.
The kind of studies to which a Sunday school curriculum is limited.
Literature, in some of its forms, and not the wider range of the day-
school curricula.
The changing nature of the Simday school clientele. Only a small
proportion of the pupils — not one fourth — remain in the same school
for a long period — say 10 to 15 years.
The great variation in the times and the rapidity of child development.
Prof. Search finds that the progress of the brightest scholars is three
and a half times as rapid as that of the duller ones.
The co-ordination of the Sunday school curriculum with the other
means for the religious education of the child. In view of these and
other neglected factors, certain great underlying principles emerge:
Third. The Sunday school curriculum cannot scientifically he mod-
eled closely after the day school curriculum, nor draw its illustrations
from it, except so far as literature in its broadest sense is concerned. To
grade the Sunday school closely after the grammar school grades is
pedagogically wrong; while the broader grades of primary, grammar,
high, and collegiate may be right.
Fourth. The basis of the Sunday school curricidum should be confined
to the Bible in all except some adult classes. A large proportion of the
children will find in the short Sunday school half-hour their chief or
their only opportunity of becoming acquainted with the greatest, richest,
most life-giving literature in the world, which will open doors to many
of the best things in life, that otherwise would be shut forever. For
other things necessary to the religious education, other agencies must
be found; while at the same time it must be remembered that true
Bible study is not like the Nile, which flows two thousand miles through
a desert without a tributary, but like the Amazon it drains the whole
continent of literature, history, nature, and life, for light and " point of
contact."
Fifth. The Sunday school curricidum must be very flexible, or it will
contravene the trend of educational science, and the efforts of educational
experts in modifying the systems of our graded schools.
Sixth. The Sunday school curriculum will he most scientific, embody
in the fullest degree all the factors involved, and accomplish its best work,
hy means of three or at most jour departments, each of which may be sub-
divided into as many grades as numbers require and opportunity permits.
I. Special short courses for the primary, up to about eight years of
age.
192 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
II. For the rest of the school, including all ages (with the excep-
tions noted below) Scripture selections, in broad sections, from story,
biography, history, and literature, with the choicest spiritual master-
pieces, in the general order of the Bible.
III. Provision must be made for the study of other parts of the
Bible, church history, the great modern crusades of missions, and
other subjects, by means of electives for the older classes.
The reasons are:
1. The selections for the main period include the larger part of the
Bible, and emphasize those parts which have most points of contact
with the children's daily life in home and school.
2. They furnish the most flexible of all curricula.
3. Belonging to literature and life, they are best adapted to the
needs of all ages, to the apperception of the younger, and to the intel-
lectual and spiritual depths of the older.
4. The peculiarity of life and literature is that each scholar, old or
young, dull or bright, gets out of the same passage exactly as much as
he has ability to receive, and the brightest loses nothing, whether he
develops three and a half times or one and a half times as rapidly as
his duller brother.
5. If the movement through the Bible is repeated two or three times
in the course of the school life, very few need fail to gain some general
knowledge of the whole Bible. That this principle sets forth the true
scientific and pedagogical direction of progress is confirmed by the cur-
ricula prepared for the junior scholars by practical experts in child-
study; by the trend of the far-seeing and skillful Dr. Blakeslee in his
later curricula; and by the persistent hold on the people and the pro-
gressive movement of the International Lesson System.
Those who confound the present International System as a synonym
with an unmixed " Uniform Lesson " system for even the youngest, or
as giving disconnected lessons without continuity, or as confining the
lessons to the verses selected for printing, have simply failed to notice
its actual working in the past or its present development.
It is hoped and believed that in addition to what has already been
accomplished, electives for special advanced classes, for years in actual
use as a part of the system, favored by two successive lesson commit-
tees, and unanimously by the Editorial Association, will be formally
adopted at Toronto next June. This will permit a somewhat more
perfect selection of the general lessons used by the vast majority of all
Sunday schools, and their restriction to those Scripture portions adapted
to all, without being subjected to the criticism of neglecting any portion
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL CURRICULUM 193
of the Bible, and thus, while rejoicing in and indebted to the many
fruitful experiments of others, render that curriculum in its present
form the most scientific and pedagogical yet proposed; and ahnost
every progressive method and new appliance becomes a part of its
working scheme as naturally as peaches grow on peach trees.
Seventh. No curriculum of any kind can be complete without special
provision for general reviews and for supplemental lessons, including
catechisms, condensed summaries of Bible history and Bible facts, and
memorizing of the masterpieces of Biblical literature.
Nor can any scheme of religious education for the young be complete
without training and study outside of the Sunday school, — at home,
in pastor's classes, in young people's societies and various other means,
bringing into closest contact the Sunday school with the home, and
the day school; the Bible with other literature; Sundays with week-
days; spiritual impressions with daily life. „: i^-t^
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON WORSHIP IN THE
SUNDAY SCHOOL
PROFESSOR WALDO S. PRATT, Mus. D.
HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
The special committee appointed to report on the subject of wor-
ship in the Sunday-school has been unable to hold a meeting, but a
strenuous effort has been made to consult by correspondence, and the
following report represents, in some measure, our collective thought.
Two main lines of inquiry present themselves. The first relates
to the general place and dignity of worship exercises taken together.
The second relates to the details of such exercises. We would offer
remarks upon both of these.
First, as to worship exercises in general. We feel the need of plead-
ing urgently for special attention to this element in Sunday school
services. A hasty, heedless, and even irreverent treatment of it is far
too common. The very name " Introductory Exercises " is apt to sug-
gest a perfunctory attitu-de of mind in superintendents, teachers, and
scholars, and in many schools these exercises have come to be mechan-
ical, tasteless, spiritless, and therefore positively harmful. Any exer-
cise of social devotion that is so handled must be dangerous, both because
of its immediate reaction on all participants at the moment, and because
it creates a false standard for similar exercises elsewhere. It may be
seriously queried whether the general poverty of public worship in
some churches is not due in large measure to the deteriorating influence
of the Sunday school in the past, under which successive generations
of children have been unintentionally misled as to the dignity, reaHty,
and utility of social prayer and praise.. Probably, too, these careless
habits have contributed to the low estimate of the Sunday school itself
in many cases and to a diffused spirit of unreaHty and lifelessness in
the whole institution. No church can afford to allow this degenerating
tendency to set in, since in the long run it is destructive both of the best
value of the Sunday school and even of the health of the Church in
general. Happily, there is an increasing number of pastors and super-
intendents that are alive to the danger, and the instinct of all earnest
workers can always be trusted to respond to efforts to avoid it.
We offer these suggestions. Whatever time is set apart in the Sun-
day school for common exercises should be jealously guarded against
abbreviation, interruption, or distraction. The intrusion of extended
194
WORSHIP IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 195
notices and of mechanical operations should be prevented. Noise
and confusion should be suppressed, and haste and triviality should be
eliminated. For the leadership of worship exercises, due preparation
should be made beforehand. The signs of listlessness and unreadiness
on the leader's part in the substance of his prayers, in the choice of
hymns, in the handling of Scripture -reading, are sure to be noted, and
they either annoy or entrap the whole school. On the other hand,
nothing is more contagious than a spirit of genuine enthusiasm and
devoutness on the leader's part. Real study should be expended by
him upon the plan and execution of all general exercises, so that they
shall not be monotonous or repetitious, or without a rememberable
point and climax. The accent may fall now on the Bible-reading,
now on the prayer, now on the singing, but something in each service
should be emphatically valuable, so that it may leave a definite im-
pression alongside of the further impression made by the lesson study.
Success must, of course, come through the dextrous handling of many
details.
With a view to the reclamation of general exercises from misuse,
we further raise the question whether in some schools it may not be
wise, at least sometimes, to invert the usual plan of the Sunday school
service, beginning the lesson study almost at the opening of the session,
and then closing with a series of general exercises of a worshipful sort.
We believe that in many cases this would be a decided gain for both
parts of the service. This might be managed so that the whole should
culminate, as it ought, in a spirit of prayer and praise, and send the
scholars forth with the warmth of devotion, zeal, and enthusiasm in
their hearts, in addition to the impress of the lesson on their heads and
their consciences. The kindling of feelings and sentiments is really
the finest result of any service, and a strong accent on common and
united worship as the crowning experience of the hour would have a
value greater than any other that can be named. Yet, it is needless to
say, this change of plan should not be attempted in any school where
the devotional atmosphere is cold or stagnant, and surely not unless
both the superintendent and the teachers are ready to put their minds
and souls into making the last section of the service a true climax.
Second, as to some details. The exercises commonly used are
Bible-reading (in concert or responsively) , prayer (often including the
Lord's prayer in concert), and more or less singing. Some schools add
various antiphonal sentences (at the opening or the close), recitations
of a psalm, the beatitudes, the creed, the commandments, etc. We re-
mark briefly on several of these in turn.
196 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
We doubt the wisdom of the common reading of the lesson as a
general exercise, except in schools where the average intelligence as to
the text is low. But we hold that there is great use in reading many of
the Psalms responsively, if they are chosen with some relation to the
lesson topic, and we wonder why more schools do not bring into such
use large quantities of other material from all parts of the Bible. By
judicious selection, the range of Biblical passages in common knowledge
might be vastly broadened, especially where the lessons themselves
are very limited in extent.
The question of Sunday-school singing is in dispute. Many seem
to hold that the great aim should be to find melodies that children
will sing with vocal zest, regardless of the sense or the inherent value
of the words — thus making the singing mainly useful as a physical
diversion. Others seem anxious to strike as many different keys in
the singing as possible, heaping together scraps of many hymns of widely
different character and turning restlessly from one to another. Some
superintendents make no preparation for this part of the service, and
either fall back helplessly on threadbare " favorites " or indulge in ec-
centric experiments on the spur of the moment. It is to be feared that
a majority of schools choose cheap and poor hymn-books, with the
notion either that " anything will do for children " or that children
are all babies. There is no doubt, too, that the incompetence of play-
ers and leaders is often an unavoidable hindrance to what otherwise
would be attempted. We feel that deliverance from many difficulties
and from much poverty of spiritual value is to be sought in a more
general, hearty, and intelligent emphasis on the hymns as such. They
should be chosen primarily for their words, should not be cut up into
too small morsels, and should often be introduced by a remark or two
to make them more worth while. We wonder that the memorizing of
fine hymns is so uncommon, both in classes and for common recitation.
We believe that the thoughtful and thorough use of even two hymns in
a service is worth infinitely more than the heedless ejaculation of
fragments of many without earnest feeling. We wonder, too, that so
few experiments are tried with Sunday school chanting. We are not
so much impressed with the importance of multiplying instruments or
magnifying a " choir," except so far as these supply needed tonal assist-
ance. The great desideratum is not volume of sound or sensuous
exhilaration, but the appeal to the imagination and the heart from the
beauty and the passion of those hymns that are really worthy of the
name. It has been demonstrated again and again that children are
susceptible to these potencies, and they should not be defrauded of
WORSHIP IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 197
what may be of the highest spiritual use to them at once and in future
life.
Sunday school prayers should certainly not be prolix or stilted.
But they ought to be real, fervent, tasteful, and broad in sympathy.
Instead of trying to cover all desirable topics or to voice all the moods
of adoration, thanksgiving, confession, and supplication at any one time,,
an effort should be made to strike different notes at different times,
so as to keep the whole gamut of thought and sentiment in mind. We
believe that there is utiUty in increasing the number of memorized
prayers that can be used by all in concert, and also that the custom
of having a moment of silent prayer preceding that which is spoken is
most desirable. Great care should be taken to stimulate the habit on
the scholars' part of making the prayer their own, not something said
to them. The co-operation of the teachers in dignifying this exercise
and making it personal to the scholars is indispensable.
The order in which worship exercises are arranged is often of great
importance. We doubt the wisdom of accenting song as the opening
item. Song, like prayer, grows out of sentiments awakened otherwise.
Opening sentences of some sort seem to be the ideal, followed by a hymn,
then by the Bible-reading, then by the prayer, then by another hymn.
If the lesson study could be advanced to an earlier point, it would be
enough to have the sentences and a hymn before the lesson, and all
other exercises after. It is evident, however, that no one order is ne-
cessary, and there may be reason for variety from time to time.
Respectfully submitted.
Waldo S. Pratt, Chairman.
Prof. Charles M. Stuart, D. D., Garrett Biblical Institute.
Rev. George F. Nason, New Rochelle, N. Y.
Mrs. a. G. Lester, Chicago, 111.
Mrs. J. Woodbridge Barnes, Newark, N. J.
Discussion
REV. GEORGE F. NASON
PASTOR NORTH AVENUE PRESBYTERIAN CHXJRCH, NEW ROCHELLE, NEW YORK
There is a tendency to count too much on the positively religious
influence of the home, and also to presume too largely upon the idea
that the child will come into the life of the church and will there ob-
tain the worshipful spirit wanting in the life of the school. Relatively,
an alarming proportion of the pupils are not attendants upon the ser-
vice of the church while they are in the school, nor do they afterwards
come into the life of the church. After a more or less brief stay in
ipS THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
the school they are lost to religious influence. This means that the
sole religious impression of many lives must be made by the Sunday
school, if ever made. In considering the place of the Sunday school
in religious education and the place of M^orship in the school, we cannot
ignore this large number to whom the school is to be the sole repre-
sentative and source of religious instruction, influence, and experience.
The report says: " The primary object of the Sunday school
is felt to be the lesson study." We must not regard the mere increase
of religious facts or truths as the supreme purpose. The facts of
Bible history, biography, and geography may be forgotten, but the
acceptance of Jesus Christ as the Saviour and Friend is a permanent
element in life's experience, and to have missed this is to have missed
the purpose of God in human life.
The present awakening will bring better teaching of the Bible.
Will it also bring a deepening of the religious experience of the pupil ?
The improvement of the lesson study in a measure depends upon the
worship of the school. The character of the devotional exercises
largely determines the religious atmosphere of the school and also the
results of lesson study. They either prepare the child for lesson study,
or in a large measure destroy the opportunity for religious impression
of the truth taught in the class. The worship after the lesson study
either dissipates the impressions of the truth or gathers them into a
personal consecration of the life to God's service. Worship focalizes
the teaching of the Word upon the personal attitude to Christ. It
brings to knowledge and sentiment the eternal NOW of God. It is
not sufficient that an annual attempt should be made at decision day
for the deep religious impression. Every service should seek to make
an abiding impression upon the religious life and add to the religious
experience. The worship of the Sunday School should lead per-
ceptibly and intelligently to the consciousness of the presence of
God and to fellowship with him.
The pastor does not generally occupy that place of importance in
the Sunday school which is his by right of position and ability. In
many schools he has little or no opportunity to spiritually influence
the pupils. He comes into contact with many young people only as
pupils in the school. They do not attend the church service and the
Sunday school is the only place where he can see and influence them.
The modern pastor is trained to know the possibilities of Sunday school
work and the methods of obtaining the desired impression upon the
child mind. The largest place of influence, reaching as it does the
entire school, is in this devotional service.
WORSHIP IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 199
The reading of the Scriptures in the average Sunday school is not
surcharged with vital life. Much of it is not adapted to the minds
of the pupils. I have failed to find a consciousness of any impression
for good made by the reading of the Bible in the Sunday school. The
average lesson has no point of contact with the child mind. Choice
passages memorized and repeated as a part of the service have been
consciously valuable. A short portion with judicious comment has
also been helpful.
All attempts to prepare liturgical enrichment for Sunday school
use must be marked by a combination of simplicity which will appeal
to the understanding of the child and that dignity whicli the subject
demands. This cannot be created, but must be taken again from
the rich store of past ages.
In the prayers of the school the problem is to lead the children in
prayer into petitions and things in which they are and should be in-
terested and to furnish with prayer thoughts and vocabulary. This
demands more thought and preparation than can be given by the
leader. Here, again, the demand is for the rich prayers of confession,
petition, and thanksgiving which are the common heritage of all Christ-
endom. The more needful is this thoughtful leadership for the fact
that so many have no other opportunity to learn to pray.
We can see in the awakening of the church, in the increased interest
of both pastors and superintendents, and in the widespread recogni-
tion of weakness in our present methods every cause for optimism.
Men engaged in propaganda must be optimistic, and are. The con-
ditions which are deplorable cannot stand before an enlightened leader-
ship, and the organization of the religious forces is becoming more
effective in providing this leadership. May God hasten the day when
His worship in our schools may be truly inspirational and full of in-
telligent reverence and love.
MISS LUCY WHEELOCK
PRINCIPAL TRAINING SCHOOL FOR KINDERGARTEN TEACHERS,
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Worship is an outward form of an inward state. It is like the flow-
ering of a delicate, and not altogether common plant called reverence,
whose roots strike deep into the soil of childhood. Its germ is found
in that first faint sense sublime of a presence whose dwelling is the
light of setting suns, and the round ocean, and the living air, and the
blue sky, and the mind of man.
It is a tender plant, needing careful nurture and an atmosphere
200 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
of religious feeling. It cannot be forced by precept nor by formal
instruction. It thrives best in a home where a mother's daily reverent
look and habitude teach her ovm simple version of the Christian faith,
and where a father's religion is not a parade duty performed on Sun-
day. It does not grow apace in a climate where doubt and suspicion
of the good in others exists, and the faihngs of the preacher in the pulpit,
and the teacher at the desk are freely discussed, nor in a country where
there is no respect of age or condition; where children do not rise up
before the hoary head as a crown of honor ; where the chief magistrate of
the land is familiarly spoken of as "Teddy."
The Sunday school has a difficult problem before it in attempting
to foster the spirit of worship where it must supply the deficiencies of
the home training and of community ideals. It can only furnish a
favorable climate during the hour of the session, and hope for some
abiding results. The atmosphere of the room and hour is more po-
tent than any teaching in fostering the feeling of worship. Disorder,
confusion, and hurry, and often, I fear, the pictorial and musical ac-
companiments of the Sunday school lesson, are fatal to the inner col-
lectedness which expresses itself in adequate forms of worship.
If the service of song and praise and prayer is to be a genuine thing, it
must voice, simply and reverently, the feelings and ideas which are
possible to boys and girls, and must be guided by one who feels the
meaning of it all.
The simple faith of childhood in a God who is the giver of all good,
ready to hear the cries of those who call unto Him, should be regarded
as the most precious possession. It is sometimes lost through the doubt
which creeps in when prayers for temporal good are encouraged.
The Great Teacher taught his class how to pray in a form of prayer
which expresses universal, and not particular, needs. The great
forms of petition which voice the highest needs of the human soul,
awaken aspiration, and give a vision of the fountain of life are those
which may be appropriated by the devout soul anywhere, and the
normal boy or girl responds to the fine expression of that hunger and
thirst after righteousness which is a real desire of the soul.
I should like to teach boys and girls of to-day to pray the prayer
of Socrates of old: "Grant me to be beautiful in the inner man, and
all I have of outer things to be at peace with those within. May I
count the wise man only rich, and my store of gold be such as none
but the good can bear. Need we anything more ? For myself, I have
prayed enough."
With the true prayer belongs, as body to spirit, the outer posture
WORSHIP IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 201
and attitude of prayer. The folded hand and the head bowed before
the Highest in Heaven react upon the consciousness and stir the ap-
propriate feelings. The Guides to Goethe's Pedagogic Province be-
lieve that reverence is a most difficult and- necessary thing for man
to attain, and insist, among the boys of the Province, upon the atti-
tude which expresses the threefold veneration for what is above us,
for what is beneath us, and what is around us. The venerable guides
to this Pedagogical Province explain that through assuming the atti-
tude of respect and reverence the feeling becomes permanent. The
highest punishment is to be declared unworthy to show reverence, to
exhibit themselves as rude and uncultivated natures.
The reality of the feeling in the Sunday school service is the chief
thing, but it can never flourish apart from the appropriate form.
Another great factor in stirring the feehng of reverence is song. It
is the language of spirituality, the speech of the heart. It makes the
most direct appeal to feeling. The tired soldier quickens his step to
the sound of the Marseillaise. The very gates of Heaven seem to
open through the singing of "Jerusalem the Golden." The restless
child is soothed by the lullaby, and drops to sleep with glimpses of
holy angels guarding his bed. But there are songs and songs. Songs
of peace and songs of war, songs of triumph and victory, exciting
and turbulent songs, gentle hymns of love and trust, and the old, ma-
jestic hymns of the faith. The Sunday school may wisely limit itself
to those songs and hymns which most directly arouse the spirit of
worship through melody, rhythm, and word content. Intelligible to
the understanding the ideas must be, and the melody appropriate to
the thought.
The great hymns of the Church are the blessed heritage of our
Sunday schools. Does not the vision of the "noble army of men and
and boys" who "trod the steep ascent to heaven, 'mid peril, toil, and
pain" awaken always the desire to "follow in their train ? " The song,
the service of prayer, with the devout attitude and quiet tone, create
the atmosphere in which seeds of reverence may grow. So does the
divinest in man spring up into eternal life.
POPULAR BIBLE-STUDY BY COMMUNITIES
CHARLES A. BRAND
MANAGING EDITOR OF THE PILGRIM PRESS
Community Bible-study is Bible-study carried on by the people of
the community outside of the Sunday school, and without regard to
church membership, or anything else but a desire to study the Bible.
It is undenominational — a popular union movement. Hundreds of
letters from almost every state in the Union, and from Canada, show
that the country is full of this week-day, popular Bible-study by com-
munities, by villages, neighborhoods, groups of people interested in
the Bible for a hundred different reasons, and including the adherents
of all denominations, and of no denomination, those who have been
out-and-out disbelievers in Christianity as they have seen it, and, in
some cases, Roman Catholics and Jews.
It should be said that there are no full statistics. The most inter-
esting are the individual classes, having no connection with any other
organization, and so not reported anywhere. While this report is
based on a wide investigation, it is certain that not half of the small,
individual community classes have been discovered.
A word must be said about the Young Men's Christian Associa-
tions, which lead in promoting this work. The associations report
38,000 men and boys studying the Bible in their classes this winter —
real study, too. Sixty of the associations have taken up the training
of teachers for their various Bible classes. In Buffalo, for instance,
there is a class the membership of which is limited to those who will
lead classes of three or more men outside of the building. It has
sixty members, of many denominations, who are teaching sixty out-
side classes. In the Y. M. C. A. shop classes in Cleveland there are
2,500 different men attending noon and midnight shop Bible classes.
There are also classes in street-car barns at all hours to accommodate
the men. One is at 4:30 in the morning. Other associations have
classes in roundhouses, flagmen's shanties, in the army and navy, in
fire-engine houses, police headquarters, and underground in mines —
38,000 men of them studying the Bible. In the college associations
there are 24,000 more in weekly Bible classes, making 62,000 in all.
In Ohio one-fourth of the men in forty-one colleges and professional
schools are enrolled in Y. M. C. A. Bible classes.
Look next at University Extension work in Bible-study. There
202
POPULAR BIBLE-STUDY BY COMMUNITIES 203
are two conspicuous examples of what an institution can do for its
own community, and by correspondence for a constituency much
larger, in the work of Union Theological Seminary and in that of the
University of Chicago. At twenty different centers in and around
New York, Dr. Richard Morse Hodge, director of the extension work,
President Charles Cuthbert Hall, and other members of the faculty
of Union Seminary, are conducting community classes in Bible-study
and religious education, and are directly reaching four hundred per-
sons. This year they have introduced a course on "Religious Edu-
cation in the Home," and a Sunday afternoon class for children on
Old Testament History. This same thing is being done by other
seminaries and colleges to a greater or less extent, and invariably re-
sults in comniimity Bible -study. The American Institute of Sacred
Literature, under the direction of President Harper of the Univer-
sity of Chicago, offers forty-seven Biblical correspondence courses.
These courses are inductive, and assume the soundness of the histor-
ical method. There are six hundred local clubs at work on them to-
day in all parts of the country. They are made up of members of all
denominations. It is community Bible-study. But to speak of the
clubs alone is to leave half the story untold, for a large part of
the work is done with individuals. A letter received from the secre-
tary, within a week, states that about 10,000 persons are connected
with the institute at the present time. This is a vast force in the religious
education of America.
Many other kinds of extension work are being done. President
Booker T. Washington writes that two nights each week the farmers
and local preachers, from miles around, gather at Tuskegee to study
the Bible, under the direction of Tuskegee Institute. And then, in
connection with this, that the study may be taken back to the peo-
ple in the region in its strength and purity, sermons are preached by
the local ministers and criticised.
The dining-room Bible-class work of the Bible Teachers' Train-
ing School in New York is based on the principle that if the people
won't come to us, we must go to them with the Bible. Take the pro-
gramme for Monday evening, any Monday evening, and you will
have the plan in a nutshell. The evening begins in the parlors of
the Calvary Baptist Church (chosen because of its location). A great
class, most of them students, gather. An early supper is served, after
which Dr. Wilbert W. White teaches the Bible lesson for the day. At
half-past seven the class breaks up and scatters in all directions. With-
in half an hour forty Bible classes, gathered about forty different din-
204 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
ing-room tables, are at work upon that same lesson. The classes often
start with two or three members of one family, then the family that
lives across the hall, or on the floor above or below; other neighbors
come in, till the classes sometimes number- twenty-five or thirty.
As to the summer institutes and assemblies, there are about one
hundred and twenty-five that make Bible-study a part of their regu-
lar work, but many of them are not strictly undenominational, and
may not be considered.
Another unusual form of community Bible-study is that being done
by hundreds of the Woman's Clubs of the country. It is very popu-
lar, and is being rapidly extended, though accurate statistics are not
available.
The facts, already given, have revealed an unusual and rapidly in-
creasing interest in the study of the Bible, some of it devotional and
evangelistic, more of it inductive and scholarly, but all of it bearing
fruit in life and character. The most extraordinary and interesting
facts, however, are those connected with individual classes and de-
tached community movements that have sprung up in almost every
state in the Union. These cases cannot be spoken of in detail, for
they are numbered by the hundred. But while they vary in size, they
show many common characteristics. Let me name a few of the larger
ones.
There is a great union class of five hundred in Dallas, Texas. In
Providence there are two important groups , one a union of the churches
of the city, in what were called "Gospel of John Conferences." These
were addressed by various pastors and seminary professors, in order
"To concentrate the thought of the church on the most spiritual of
the gospels, and to bring churches and seminaries closer together."
The other is the Providence Bibhcal Institute, with two hundred mem-
bers. With this, the Rhode Island Woman's Club has come into
affiliated relationship, having as its object to increase interest in
the study of the Bible, particularly in its literary and historical
aspects.
The Bible Lectures Committee of the Twentieth Century Club is
doing similar work for Greater Boston. The high-water mark this
year was reached in the course of morning lectures by Professor
Richard G. Moulton, which repeatedly packed the Colonial Theatre.
The Club's popular classes have about three hundred members.
The returns show a great increase in the number of communities
with union Bible classes for Sunday school teachers. To the Inter-
national Sunday School Association is largely due the credit for this
POPULAR BIBLE-STUDY BY COMMUNITIES 205
work. I venture to say that it is doing more to promote broad, un-
denominational co-operation in religious education to-day than any
other religious organization. We do not often think of that side of
its work, but we must not let its uniform lesson idea blind us to the
real greatness of its work.
Then last, but by no means least in significance, are the great
numbers of smaller community classes that have sprung up without
connection with any outside movement, sometimes originating with a
pastor, who is an enthusiastic Bible student, sometimes with the super-
intendent of public schools, with the men's class in one of the Sunday
schools, with the teachers' meeting, with a college boy at home for
vacation, and in countless other ways.
The reports show that nine tenths of these community classes are
enthusiastically studying the Bible as literature and the results of his-
torical Bible-study. The membership is remarkable, enlisting the
strongest and best people in the communities, large numbers of pub-
lic school teachers, large numbers of business men, and society and
club women.
Now, what does it all mean ? What explains it ? Why this inter-
est in Bible- study on the part of hundreds and thousands of people
who have fought shy of it before? Let me suggest but a few of the
many things that combine to explain the condition:
(i) First may be named the emphasis that has been laid for the
last ten years on the fact that, whatever else it may be, the Bible is
a great literature.
(2) A desire to know the results of the literary and historical study
of the Bible. People have had their eyes open. They have discovered
that higher criticism is not an emanation from the pit, as they were
once led to believe; that it is never sneered at by the most intelligent
ministers, and is taught in almost every seminary of any standing in
this country. Curiosity? Perhaps, but interest is a better word, and,
whatever it is, it is leading people to forget their differences and their
prejudices, and study the Bible as it is.
(3) Another thing that helps explain the change is, that to under-
take a course of Bible study now does not mean what it once did. It
used to be a pious act, and involved a certain set of beliefs about the
Bible, a certain humbling of one's intellectual self before it. That,
many people could not honestly do. It was a confession of faith;
now it is a confession of a desire to know. The confession of faith
comes after the study now, not before. This is the true order. And
so, many of the more intellectually self-respecting people in these com-
2o6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
munities — not church members — are uniting with church people and
others in a genuine inductive study of the Bible.
(4) The faith we are showing in our own great Book makes a tre-
mendous appeal, especially to young men and women. We ask no fa-
vors for it. We urge the fullest and freest investigation of it. What
people find to be true, that they are to beHeve. The Christian scholar's
profound faith in the Bible, then, is proving contagious.
(5) It is being studied in a thorough and scholarly manner. Most
of the study is not called devotional, but, for all that, hfe and light
and salvation are in the Book, and the people know it. They know,
somehow, that in the Bible there is a revelation from God for them,
and they are hungry for it. Many of the people whom we are so
surprised to see in these community Bible classes have for a long
time come "to Jesus by night," at least in their hearts. They are
simply coming to him in the daytime now.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS AND LESSONS FOR THE
SUNDAY SCHOOL
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE
REV. GEORGE W. MEAD, Ph.D.
PASTOR FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND
The instructions issued by the Sunday school section of the Religious
Education Association to the committee for which we now report were :
" To prepare a descriptive bibliography of the various lessons
and books bearing upon Sunday school methods, without commendation
or indorsement."
We respectfully report that such publications may be classified as
follows: I. Liternational Lesson Helps, by denominational pub-
lishing societies and by independent pubHshers. 2. Denomina-
tional Graded Lessons. 3. Manuals and Text-books for Graded
Lessons, by committees and associations. 4. Books containing
Suggested Courses of Study for Graded Bible Schools. 5. Book
with Lessons suited to the Individual Departments of the Graded
Bible School. 6. Graded Courses, by private and independent pub-
lishers. 7. Books on Methods of Sunday School Work, Pedagogy,
and Psychology. 8. Miscellaneous Sunday School Papers.
I. The detailed features of the International Lesson Helps are
tabulated in the addendum of this report. The arrangement of ma-
terial in these Helps is, for the most part, in " traditional " form.
But there are notable exceptions in leaflets and quarterlies for vary-
ing grades, which are often provided material in addition to the Inter-
national Lessons, and with Lesson Helps, which show a thorough ap-
preciation of the principles and value of modern pedagogy. But
such editorial attitude cannot be said to apply to any one of the pub-
lications as a whole, while with some it is entirely wanting. In others,
the improved methods are in name only, which emphasizes the care re-
quired in the selection of a lesson system. One series on the Interna-
tional has a department miscalled the " Graded System," which is
nothing more than a church catechism; and the whole series of lessons
gives no indication of an appreciation of the new thought and method.
On the other hand, the almost universal emphasis on teacher-training,
the adaptation of lessons to certain grades, and the various provisions
of graded Supplemental Lessons indicates a cordial if conservative
attitude toward the demand for a better pedagogy.
207
2o8 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
II. Passing now to the graded courses of study offered by de-
nominational publishing societies we have the following:
1. The General Council (Lutheran) Pubhcation Society, Phila-
delphia. The lessons consist of Bible stories, pictures, history, geog-
raphy, biography and hterature. This series represents perhaps
the first thoroughgoing attempt to produce Sunday school text-books
comparable to those used in the pubUc schools.
2. The American Baptist Publication Society, Philadelphia and
Chicago, has a series called " Two Years with Jesus " for primary
classes.
The Intermediate Quarterly, the Advance Quarterly, the Home
Department Quarterly, all contain material other than that dealing
with the International Lessons. In the Home Department Quarterly
and in the Senior Quarterly what are called " General Lessons " are
given prominent place. These lessons are arranged in series; for
example, the tenth series is called " The Old Covenant and the New,"
and contains four lessons: i. The Old Testament and the New; 2.
Unity of the Bible as a whole; 3. National Divisions of the Bible; 4.
The New Testament.
The Baptist Teacher contains Teacher Training Departments and
a Department of Oriental Lessons, and deals with Beginners' Course
and General Lessons. It contains, also, a department called " From
Missionary Fields."
3. The Sunday School Commission of the Diocese of New York
has a series of paper-bound text-books on the basis of the latest knowl-
edge in the psychology and pedagogy of religion.
The features of the series are: Lists of books of reference; lists
of pictures and other aids; suggested illustrations for each lesson;
lists of maps, charts, chronological tables, poetic gems, and so forth.
The lesson material is arranged according to what is called the Source
Method; that is, the question followed by the Scripture reference and
a blank space for the answer, thus directing the pupil to the Bible
for the knowledge necessary to answer the question. Useful Me-
moriter Passages, consisting of hymns, psalms, collects, and Scripture
selections, are included in the system.
4. The Congregational Sunday School and Publishing Society
(Boston and Chicago), in " The Beginners' Lessons," take up the
international uniform beginners' course. All the other quarterlies,
with the exception of the abridged edition of the Junior Quarterly,
contain subject-matter in addition to the lesson material of the Inter-
national series.
BOOKS AND LESSONS FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 209
5. The publications of the Unitarian Sunday School Society
(Boston) are manuals on O. T. Narratives, Story, Great Thoughts of
Israel, the Life and Teachings of Jesus, Beginning of Christianity,
Beacon Lights of Christianity, and Great Passages in the Bible.
The One-Topic-Three- Grade Course is what might be called a
quasi-graded course; that is, the same subject forms the basis of study
in all grades.
III. Manuals and Text-books for Graded Lessons by Com-
mittees AND Associations
1. The Presbyterian Board of Publication, Richmond, Virginia,
has a " Manual of the Graded Course of Instruction in the Sunday
School and Family," which provides for thirteen grades, including the
Normal Department.
2. The Michigan Congregatiofial Association Committee publishes
" The Graded Sunday School Course of Study for the Teacher," which
has a scheme of supplemental lessons for the Primary Department,
and four courses corresponding to the four Departments into which the
the Sunday school is classified.
Similar graded work is outlined: 3. In the Reports of the Com-
mittee on Graded Bible School presented to the Association of Con-
gregational Churches in Illinois, in reports Nos. i, 2, and 3, 1901-1903,
inclusive;
4. In the Recommendations for Grading by the Rochester (New
York) Sunday School Superintendents' Union, J. H. Gilmore, Chair-
man of the Committee;
5. In the Manual for the Graded Sabbath School, Pennsylvania
State Sabbath School Association; and
6. In the Unitarian Manual, published by the Western Unitarian
Sunday School Society, Chicago, containing
(a) A Study of Religion. Six Years' Outline.
(b) A Study of Duties; The Growth of Character. Six Years'
Outline.
IV. Books containing suggested courses of study for Graded Bible
Schools :
1. An Outline of a Bible School Curriculum. Pease. Univer-
sity of Chicago Press.
2. Principles and Ideals for the Sunday School. Burton and
Mathews. (University of Chicago Press.)
3. The Pedagogical School. Haslett. (Fleming H. Revell Com-
pany.)
2IO THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
4. Grading the Sunday School. Axtell. (The Cumberland Press.)
5. Sunday School Movements in America. Marianna C. Brown.
(Fleming H. Revell Company.)
6. Modern Methods in Sunday-school Work. Mead. (Dodd,
Mead & Co.)
V. Books with Lessons Suited to the Individual Depart-
ments OF THE Graded Bible School.
I. Text-hooks jar Teachers of Children,
a. Kindergarten.
1. Frederica Beard: The Kindergarten Sunday School. (Pilgrim
Press, Boston and Chicago.) Detailed lessons for one year, arranged
according to the months of the year, recognizing appropriate seasons.
Other lessons recognizing the social relationships of children.
2. Laura Ella Cragin: Kindergarten Stories for the Sunday
School and Home. (The Winona Publishing Co., Chicago.) Stories of
the life of Christ, arranged as far as possible chronologically, and with
appropriate lessons for special seasons, all of which are illumined by
related incidents and stories. The book contains a detailed kinder-
garten programme.
3. Gertrude Walker and Harriett S. Jenks: Songs and Games
for Little Ones. (Oliver Ditson Company, Boston.) "Is designed to
meet a need " of the kindergarten, the school, and the home, for songs
and games for " little ones."
h. First, Second, and Third Grades.
1. Six to Eight Years. Florence U. Palmer; One Year of Sun-
day-school Lessons for Young Children. A Manual for Teachers and
Parents. (Macmillan Company, New York.) Appropriate to the
seasons and to the relationships of the child in his home, among his
fellows and to the church and God. Illustrations, music.
2. Primary Manual. The Rainbow Series. (Rainbow Publishing
Company, Manchester, N. H.) " Memory Work," " The Ten Com-
mandments," " Beatitudes," " First Psalm," " Books of the Bible,"
"One Year of Stories from the Bible."
The Miracles of the Bible. Same series as above. " Remarks upon
Selection to be Studied," " Questions," " Written Answer Material."
Stories of the Bible. Same series as above. " Remarks upon
Selection to be Studied," " Questions," " Written Answer Material."
The Parables of the Bible. " Remarks upon Selection to be Stud-
ied," " Questions," " Written Answer Material."
3. George Hamilton Archibald: The Beginners' Course in Bible
BOOKS AND LESSONS FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 211
Study (two years). Treatment of the Beginners' course of the Inter-
national Lesson Committee. " Golden Text," " Aim," " Sugges-
tions for Teaching," " Plan of Presentation of Each Lesson," " Man-
ual Work for Children," " Memory Work." Published by Sunday
school Times Company.
4. Mrs. Margaret J. Cushman Haven: Bible Lessons for Little
Beginners. (Fleming H. Revell Company.) Two years. " Golden
Text," " Passages for the Teacher's Study, with Analysis," " Outline
of Lesson," " Blackboard Hints," " Presentation of the Lesson to the
Class," " Suggestions for Music."
5. Mary E. Hutcheson: The Teacher's Manual. (New Educa-
tion Series, Columbus, Ohio.) " Introduction," " Suggestions to
Teachers," Under each lesson " Objective Helps," " Discussion with
the Children," " AppHcation," " Suggestions for Teacher's Reading."
6. Walter L. Sheldon: The Old Testament Bible Stories for the
Young. (W. M. Welch & Co., Chicago.) " Stories Re-told, with
Suggestions to the Mother or Teacher."
7. Frederica Beard: Old Testament Manual. (Winona Publish-
ing Company, Chicago.) A two years' course of lessons for children
of 7 to 9 years of age, covering Old Testament history.
8. William L. Worcester: On Holy Ground. (J. B. Lippincott
Company, Philadelphia.) Is a series of stories from the Old Testament
and Gospels with pictures of Bible Lands, peoples, and things,
illustrative of the Scripture study.
2. Text-hooks for Teachers of Children in the Junior and Intermediate
Grades.
1. Nine to Fifteen Years. Georgia L. Chamberlin: An Intro-
duction to the Bible for Teachers of Children. (University of Chicago
Press, Chicago.) Pedagogical introduction. Forty lessons giving an
introduction to each of the divisions of the Biblical material, books of
history and story, poetry, law, sermons, letters, visions. Under each
lesson: "Aim," "Bibliography," "Suggestions for the Preparation
of the Teacher," " Suggestions for the Presentation of the Lesson,"
" Home Work for the Children," " Suggestions to Parents."
2. Melvin Jackson: Travels of Paul. (The International Com-
mittee of the Y. M. C. A.) A course of study for boys' Bible classes.
" Home Readings," " Questions for Discussion for the Boys," " Man-
ual for the Teacher, Containing Outline for Study and Suggestions for
Presentation."
3. W. H. Davis: Men of the Bible. (The International Com-
212 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
mittee of the Y. M. C. A.) For boys' Bible classes. " Home Read-
ings," " Questions for Discussion for the Boys," " Manual for the
Teacher Containing Outline for Study and Suggestions for Presenta-
tion."
4. William Byron Forbush: The Illuminated Lessons on the Life
of Jesus. (Underwood and Underwood, New York.) " Sugges-
tions for the Use of the Lessons, with Stereographs." General pedago-
gical introduction. " Home Work," " Manual Methods," " Maps."
5. Nahum Wesley Grover: Catechetical Bible Lessons. (Wi-
nona Publishing Company, Chicago.) General catechism, designed to
bring the great Scripture truths before children in a definite and
lasting way.
6. ■ W. J. Mutch: Junior Bible Lessons. (Christian Nurture, New
Haven, Conn.) The question method pursued in connection with
Biblical stories, poems, hymns introduced; blanks for written-answer
questions.
8. W. J. Mutch: History of the Bible. (Christian Nurture, New
Haven, Conn.) " Arranged for Use as a Text-book." " Brief His-
tory of the Growth of the Bible and Its Many Versions." Each chapter
followed by review questions.
9. Walter L. Sheldon: Citizenship and the Duties of a Citizen.
" Ethics for the Young." (W. M. Welch Company, Chicago.) (For
use rather in the home and the day-school than the Sunday-school.)
10. Walter L. Sheldon: Lessons in the Study of Habits. (W. M.
Welch Company, Chicago.) " A Series of Chapters on the Meaning
of Habit and the Habits Themselves." " Suggested Dialogue, Ques-
tion, Maxims, Poems."
11. Ernest D. Burton: Studies in the Gospel According to Mark.
(The University of Chicago Press.) " Preface for the Pupil," " Pref-
ace to the Teacher." Sixty-nine sections of Scripture material.
12. Frederica Beard: Wonder Stories from the Gospels. (Wi-
nona Publishing Company, Chicago.) A series of lessons for
children of nine and ten years of age on, the Life and Ministry of Jesus.
13. Mrs. M. G. Kennedy; Special Songs and Services, Nos i.
and 2 (W. A. Wilde Company, Boston, Chicago), arranged for Primary
and Intermediate Classes. Various Order of Services are given.
3. Text-hooks for Adults and Senior Classes.
I. William R. Harper: The Foreshadowings of the Christ, The
Work of the Old Testament Sages, The Work of the Old Testament
Priests. (The American Institute of Sacred Literature, Chicago.)
BOOKS AND LESSONS FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 213
Three outline studies, covering each nine months, using only Scripture
material, inductive method, daily work assigned, review questions,
provision for certificate, individual class- work.
2. Ernest D. Burton: The Life of Christ, The Founding of the
Christian Church. (American Institute of Sacred Literature, Chi-
cago.) Two outline studies covering each nine months, using only
Scripture material, inductive method, daily work assigned, review
c^uestions, provision for certificate, individual class-work.
3. Shailer Mathews: The Social and Ethical Teaching of Jesus.
(The American Institute of Sacred Literature, Chicago.) Outline of
material from the Gospels.
4. Hazard-Fowler: The Books of the Bible with Relation to
Their Place in History. (Pilgrim Press, Boston, Chicago.) Fifty
studies on the Biblical books.
5. Taylor and Morgan : Studies in the Life of Christ. (Eaton and
Mains, and Jennings and Pye.) " Suggestions for Daily Work," " In-
troductory Material," " Personal Thought."
Taj'lor and Morgan: Studies in the Apostolic Age. (Eaton and
Mains, and Jennings and Pye.) Same series as Taylor and Morgan:
Life of Christ.
6. Ernest D. Burton: Handbook on the Life of the Apostle Paul.
(The University of Chicago Press.) " An outline for class-room and
private study."
7. H. M. Hamill: Practical Outline Study of the Four Gospels,
Life of Christ, Acts. (Winona Publishing Company, Chicago.) " Sug-
gestions for Drill."
8. Milton E. Kern: Lessons in New Testament History. (Union
College Press, College View, Nebraska.) Volumes i and 2, Life of
Christ; volume 3, Apostolic History.
9. Burton and Mathews: Constructive Studies in the Life of
Christ. (University of Chicago Press.) " Map," " Suggestions to
Teachers," " General Bibliography," "Historical Introduction," "Il-
lustrations." Thirty-five chapters.
10. William R., Harper: Constructive Studies in the Priestly
Element of the Old Testament. (University of Chicago Press.) " Eleven
chapters; covering history of worship in the Old Testament, according
to the early, the middle, and the late period. A comparative study of
the laws and usages of worship." " Full Bibliography of both English
and German authors," " Constructive Work," " Questions," " Sug-
gestions," " Supplementary Topics."
11. Henry T. Sell: Bible Study by Books. (Fleming H. Revell
214 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Company, Chicago.) Fifty-two studies, introductions to the Books
of the Bible, the author, " Analysis," " Aim," etc.
12. Henry T. Sell: Supplementary Bible Studies. (Revell Com-
pany, Chicago.) Twenty-four chapters on the History of the Bible,
the Land of Palestine, etc.
13. Henry Berkowitz: The Open Bible. (The Jewish Chautau-
qua Society, Philadelphia.) A series of Lessons, with Required Read-
ing, Suggestions, Tests, and Reviews on the Old Testament History
and Literature.
14. D. C. Marquiss: Life of Christ in Seven Periods. (Winona
Publishing Company, Chicago.) An outline of Scripture material,
with occasional notes.
VI. Graded Courses by Private and Independent Publishers.
1. The Bible Study Union, or Blakeslee, Lessons provide " Six
Comprehensive and Connected Series of Lessons." These are divided
into biographical and historical lessons. The biographical are: "The
Patriarchs, Kings, and Prophets," " The Life of Christ," and " New
Testament Heroes." The historical are: " Old Testament History,"
" Gospel History," and " Apostolic Church History."
Uniformity in the subjects studied, together with a grading, so far
as possible, of the material and treatments under this general subject,
form the basis of this series.
2. Bible Studies, Elyria, Ohio, provides for four grades with the
purpose of making the series a correlated and chronological study of
the Bible from an historical standpoint.
3. The Rainbow Publishing Co., Manchester, New Hampshire,
issues undated text-books for a graded school of five departments, with
recommendation of the International Lessons for senior classes.
4. Christian Nurture, New Haven, Connecticut, provides a graded
course based on the three department divisions of the Sunday school.
" Junior Bible Lessons " is a cloth-bound text-book. " The History of
the Bible " and " Christian Teachings " are paper bound. The books
are intended to be used as text-books by the pupil, and are undated.
5. The Lutheran Book Concern, Columbus, Ohio, publishes " Bib-
lical History for Primary Classes," a cloth-bound text-book, illustrated
with woodcuts, 162 pages; and " Biblical History for Intermediate
and Higher Classes," a board-bound text-book of 368 pages. Both
contain only the words of Scripture.
6. The George W. Jacobs and Company, Philadelphia, Penn-
sylvania, publishes two quarterlies of selected lessons, the one being for
use in the Primary and Junior Grades; the other for the Intermediate
BOOKS AND LESSONS FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 215
and Senior Grades. The features are memory verses, questions, " col-
lect," and for the Intermediate and Senior Grades daily Bible Readings.
7. Illustrative of individual work of many pastors, we mention the
series of graded studies prepared by H. P. De Forest, D. D., for the five
departments of the Woodward Avenue Congregational Church, Detroit,
Michigan. The booklets are: Course one, "Story of the Jews."
Course two, " Studies of the Apostolic Age." Course three, " The Story
and Teachings of Jesus." Course four, " The History of Ancient
Israel." Course five, " Israel's Prophetic Age."
Respectfully submitted.
Geo. Whitefield Mead,
Miss Georgia L. Chamberlin,
Delbert S. Ullrick,
Commitiee.
Note. — A very full Bibliography of works for Sunday School
teachers and officers, and for students of religious pedagogy, has been
prepared by the Rev. William Walter Smith, M. D., under the direction
of the Sunday School Department. It is so complete that it should be
of value to a very large class, and it is the hope of the Religious Educa-
tion Association to make it available to all by issuing it at some
future date as a separate publication.
THE SCOPE AND PURPOSE OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL
EXHIBIT
REV. RICHARD MORSE HODGE, D.D.
DIRECTOR EXTENSION COURSES FOR LAY STUDENTS, UNION THEOLOGICAL
SEMINARY, NEW YORK CITY
The Sunday School Department of the Religious Education Associa-
tion has arranged a Sunday school exhibit in Gilbert Hall of this build-
ing (Tremont Temple), and delegates and all others interested are
invited to the inspection of the exhibit during the sessiqn of the con-
vention.
The exhibit displays the different policies of religious education
pursued by Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish Sunday Schools
in the United States and Canada. The material embraces Sunday
school building plans, apparatus, maps, oriental models, literature,
curricula, printed forms for administration, and a more comprehensive
display than has been made elsewhere of manual work executed by
Sunday school pupils, in the form of maps and picture and narrative
books. A printed guide has been provided, which locates the exhibits
according to wall sections and tables. Members of the committee in
charge will be found ready to furnish information regarding the ex-
hibits and give demonstrations of manual work either immediately on
application or according to appointment. A clerk has been engaged
to take orders for any purchasable articles, samples of which may be
on exhibition. The exhibit has been made as comprehensive as cir-
cumstances would permit. The articles displayed have been reduced
to as small a number as the comprehensive character of the exhibit
would permit, lest the plan of arrangement should be lost in a multi-
plicity of detail, and the result prove more bewildering than suggestive,
especially as the time available to delegates for the inspection of what
is offered is necessarily limited.
The purposes of the exhibit may be summarized as follows :
I. To record the present progress of religious education in the
Sunday schools of the country. The maps of paper-pulp and clay,
for instance, have been made during the last twelve months, and are the
first work of pupils in Sunday schools which, as far as known, are the
pioneers in this method of Sunday-school geography study. The best
that can be said of the books shown is that they include the most im-
portant recent contributions to Sunday school literature.
THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL EXHIBIT 217
2. To promote the co-operation of Protestant, Roman Catholic,
and Jewish Sunday school workers in the sokition of problems of re-
ligious education. This is the first Sunday school exhibit at which
the methods of these three bodies or of any two of them have been
shown together.
3. To suggest the value of permanent Sunday school exhibits of a
comparative and non-sectarian character in every city at least in the
country. A permanent encyclopaedic exhibit has been developed for
several years at the headquarters of the Sunday School Commission
of the Diocese of New York, considerable material from which figures
in the exhibit of this convention. A permanent exhibit is being collected
under the auspices of the Jewish Summer School.
4. To demonstrate the value of a Sunday school museum, on how-
ever modest a scale, for every Sunday school in the land. Our ex-
hibit indicates what' material would prove most useful, the character
and quality of the articles necessary to make such a museum up to date,
and what articles could be made by Sunday-school pupils themselves,
and information is offered concerning where additional equipment can
be purchased. The contents of a Sunday school museum are available
for classroom use; and the honor of securing a place for their best
work in the museum of the school cannot fail to stimulate the efforts
of pupils in all of the forms of manual exercises employed. A special
room for a museum, however desirable, will be found by no means es-
sential. The whole plant may be made a school and museum in one.
5. To remind theological seminaries and colleges that, without a
museum of Sunday school appliances and specimens of pupil work,
they lack essential equipment for Sunday school teacher training.
Teachers' College, Columbia University, has started a permanent Sun-
day school exhibit in its museum, and last year held the first of pro-
posed special annual Sunday school exhibits. A Sunday school
museum has been undertaken also at Union Theological Seminary,
New York.
6. To demonstrate the value of seeing, handhng, and using Sunday
school appliances and of practising manual methods in teacher-training
classes conducted by normal departments of Sunday schools, Sunday
school institutes, and summer schools. A very few minutes' experi-
ment in our Sunday school exhibit hall will convince the most skeptical,
whether spent in explaining a conclusion upon a Sunday school ques-
tion to an inquirer or in seeking information of some one qualified to
explain an unfamiliar principle or method of Sunday school administra-
tion or teaching.
2i8 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
An exhibit has an obvious function in the work of the Sunday school
department of the ReHgious Education Association. This platform is
the rostrum of the department. The different Sunday schools of the
country are the department's numerous laboratories. And the annual
exhibit is its traveling museum. The museum and rostrum alike
derive inspiration from the local laboratories. If the method of ex-
pression of the rostrum is more elastic, that of the museum is more
concrete. Claims made upon the platform are demonstrated in the
exhibit by the evidence of actual accomplishment. The exhibit is a
friendly competitor of the platform. You have heard the adage,
" What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say." You
remember, too, the Greek who said, "You can make the laws, only
let me write the people's songs." The many men, women, and children
who have made contributions to your exhibit have no reason to envy
those who speak from this platform. You may make the speeches,
if only we can make the exhibit!
An exhibit would seem to be as essential to the Young Men's Chris-
tian Association and Young People's Societies departments as to the
department of Sunday schools. In fact, the educational work of all
of these departments is represented in the exhibit which we have pre-
pared.
THE CONTENTS OF THE EXHIBIT.
Sunday School Plant: Plans, furniture, and apparatus.
Literature: Text-books and reference works.
Maps: Wall relief and print maps and atlases.
Pictures: Wall prints, small prints, pictijre cards, and stereographs.
Models: Oriental dwellings, furniture, implements, and other ar-
ticles.
Administration: Forms for records, programs, and diplomas.
Curricula: The International and other one-subject courses and
graded courses.
Manual Methods: Biblical maps executed by pupils in relief,
colors, lines, and points; their picture-books of prints, titles, texts,
written descriptions, and illustrative drawings; narrative books of
biblical history, illustrated by maps and drawings; and illuminated
cards and folders of hymns, prayers, prints, and drawin^^s.
VI. SECONDARY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
WHAT CHANGES SHOULD BE MADE IN PUBLIC HIGH
SCHOOLS TO MAKE THEM MORE EFFICIENT IN
MORAL TRAINING?
PRESIDENT G. STANLEY HALL, Ph.D., LL.D.
CLARK UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS
The answer to this question that will probably first occur to most is
the method long in vogue in Germany, and now adopted with some
modifications in France and England. Under this system children
of each confession go at certain hours, provided each week on the
secondary programme, to special religious teachers, who are usually
nominated by the church and examined and paid by the state. Germany
recognizes Catholics, Lutherans, and Jews. England requires some
religious instruction for all children, even those of free thinkers. This
scheme has intricacies and many variations, but, in general, works well,
and partial applications of it have been tried sporadically in this country.
It is, however, hardly practicable here on a large scale, for many rea-
sons which do not concern us here. What does concern us, however,
is that it is very doubtful if Bible teaching, hymn, church forms, and
history, especially when taught intellectually for examination, have
much power for morahty, and I, for one, am coming to think that how-
ever the Scriptures are taught they need to be supplemented by other
agencies to entirely meet the ethical needs of our modern youth. It
should be no shock to believers to find they cannot make the Bible
do everything. This is a view now held by many, and so we have a
number of attempts, mostly rather crude, to make selections from the
facts and teachings of Confucianism and even Mohammedanism, but
especially from Buddhism, and also several attempts by Protestants
to select and re-edit a few of the lives of the saints, and some of the more
liberal editors incorporate pertinent secular maxims and proverbs,
extracts of Talmudic and patristic hterature, etc. For one I cannot
abandon hope of a Bible chrestomathy like that of Moulton or the Chi-
cago Woman's Club, on which Catholics and Protestants and also,
for the Old Testament, Jews shall agree, and to this I personally would
like to add gems from other religions. This, together with a few hymns
and prayers, is incorporated in all the best authorized German readers
and gives them a unique and welcome character. The time has now
219
220 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
come for another committee of ten or less to try to solve this problem.
But highly susceptible as youth is to religious influences, and potent
above all other agencies as these are for virtue, even the above resources
are not entirely sufl&cient for adolescent nature and needs. Religions
do need to be supplemented by other motives to develop juvenile
morality. Thus, secondly, while using to the uttermost every religious
motivation, some have sought ways and means to supplement these by
other efforts, as follows: English and other classical literature and
history has been searched for outcrops of great moral problems.
These have been excerpted, perhaps restated with some sacrifice of
classical form for the sake of content, epitomized, and condensed and
used to perform the decision of conscience, to show virtue both ex-
ternally rewarded and also as its own reward, to broaden moral expe-
rience by depicting great struggles between good and evil in the soul,
and in a word, to teach ethics by example. Mr. H. Bigg calls such an
anthology an ethnic Bible, and in France an official text-book has been
compiled to inspire youth to great deeds by illustrations from the na-
tional history and literature, and the Germans seek this end in their
many-volumed readers. Indeed, the claim is now heard that every
other end in the teaching of the vernacular literature, such as style,
form, historical completeness, literary criticism, philology, should be
absolutely subordinated to the purpose of moral improvement. With
all these ideals and endeavors, I, for one, have the most hearty sym-
pathy, and beheve them pedagogically sound and full of hope. It
would mean a radical reform and reconstruction of the present pre-
scribed methods and ideals of high-school English, and would rescue
this work from its present degradation of content in the interests of form.
But even both these methods are together not entirely adequate to
the present grave and growing need of moralizing high-school educa-
tion. To them should be added, as a third, a systematic course of moral
education of a very concise, concrete, and practical kind, an outline of
which, as it has grown in my mind, is as follows: First should come
health as wholeness or holiness of body, comprising plain, personal,
homely talks, with perhaps sometimes brief papers and discussions
by the class on diet, regimen, individual hygiene, sleep, body-keeping
generally. Here the intense zest for athletics should be tapped or
turned on as a motive power. Temperance comes here. There should
be a little sane and scientific teaching about alcoholism, the ideals of
the simple life versus luxury, regularity, dress, and this part of the
course should culminate in a few very plain medical talks to boys alone
about purity, sexual regimen, and heredity.
HIGH SCHOOLS AND MORAL TRAINING 221
Then should come something about the life of feeling, especially
anger, its place, the kinds of temper, and their vents, control, patience,
with snatches of the new psychology in this field. So, too, the very
delicate topic of love has aspects where wise instruction by hints and
rapid suggestion can do much. Loving aright up the Platonic ladder
to the good, beautiful and true, is a fruitful source and theme of wis-
dom. Friendship is a helpful and related theme, and its lofty ideals in
antiquity and modern instances can be adduced, showing its qualities
and influences, and what companionship, cliques, and even gangs and
other forms of youthful association can do. Even sympathy with
animals should not be omitted. So fear and cowardice, true courage,
moral and physical, the Aristotelian fearing aright as the consumma-
tion of human wisdom, envy, jealousy, revenge, etc., should not be
omitted.
So, too, the great primal duties, based on conscience and the moral
instinct, and casuistry, habit and its relation to duty, can be enforced
in an unsophisticated way, and made simple and direct. Work and
the strenuous life versus sloth and idleness; selfishness versus altruism;
generosity and benevolence, and the duty of helpfulness; obedience,
authority, conformity to custom, conventional lies, independence, and
individuality; courtesy, politeness, the ideal of the gentleman in relation
to society and to women, social form, magnanimity, noblesse oblige versus
exiguousness and overscrupulosity and meanness; patriotism and its
duties and implications, citizenship and the rudiments of civic obliga-
tion; money, wealth, and poverty, their uses and abuses, display and
simple tastes; — all these virtues we know, if Plato did not, can now
be taught to some extent. So, too, something is needed about euphoria,
the joy of living, the place of fun, having a good time, play, sports,
games, the duty of happiness, the optimist and the pessimist, the con-
duct of the imagination, revery, interest, curiosity, and their opposite,
apathy, nil admirari, and indifference. Perhaps highest of all moral
themes for youth stands honor. It can do for the modern heart some
things religion cannot. It has had many a code and standard. In
Bushido it is well called the soul of Japan, as it was of chivalry, and has
given us our ideals of the gentleman. No human soul is so degraded that
it cannot respond intensely to some form of this sentiment. It has made
men who scorned religion accept disgrace and even death in silence,
and fly to the wages of battle where Hfe was at stake. Like all strong
instincts, it is often perverted, and sanctions many evils, and is in crying
need of edification. Probably every man of spirit would prefer death
to dishonor. Perhaps its psycho-genetic root is loyalty to the unborn,
222 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
but if so, it is often strangely perverted. It can probably be made the
strongest of all supports of true virtue. Hovi^ can the true teacher, who
is faithful to his high calling as a real shepherd of souls, view with in-
difference the distortion and degeneration of this primal principle or
not yearn to re-orient and utilize it for morality ?
I know that many wise teachers will doubt the feasibility of such a
course in practical ethics. I grant it requires consummate tact, good
taste, great knowledge of youth, and not only the experience that comes
with age, but a unique equipment of modern special knowledge, and
also that although there have been many tentative and partial efforts
in this direction, it has not yet anywhere fully demonstrated its power.
The text-books in elementary ethics are, the best of them, not adequate,
and the worst, by far in the majority, are those that are devoted to
ethical theory, which youth abhors, and which teach a senescent morality
that suggest that Plato was right that a young man should be whipped
who wanted to study ethics. But it is in the vast new resources of
inductive and empirical psychology, ethics and sociology, that the most of
the best of this material is found, and that these are now adequate I am
fully and completely convinced. It is precisely here that it is capable,
when the data are properly organized, of inaugurating a most needed
and salutary departure. The opponent of such a course most to be
feared is the academic professor of ethics of the speculative and his-
toric school, because for him ethics means the study of ultimate standards
of right and wrong, and it is precisely of this that I would say with Plato
it should be forbidden to youth. What is needed is not types of theory,
but types of each virtue and vice, the miser, hypocrite, saint, martyr, the
sot and the sage, the paragon of patience or heroism, the great patriot,
the dreamer, idler, the roue, the leader, and the henchman, the rollicker
and the precisian and formalist, the ideal student, the investigator, the
recluse and man of affairs, the fop, cynic, the Puritan and the cavalier,
the ascetic and the debauchee, the finicky and overscrupulous man,
and the slattern, the virago, the naive, and sophisticated, and all the
other types of human nature which stand out in letters and history more
clearly and uniquely because in simpler lineaments than they are any-
where found in life. These are single, elemental, moral qualities per-
sonified, and so best suited for those in the elemental stage of studying
man, the supreme end of all study. These put forth with strong colors,
and fit incidents set in characteristic action, brought into conflict with
'^ach other with the good always triumphing over the bad, teach lessons
that sink deep and take root and bear fruit in youthful souls. The
moral must be submerged, impressed indirectly by hint and suggestion,
but must never be absent.
HIGH SCHOOLS AND MORAL TRAINING 223
Now this can be done, but not ad hoc, nor by one individual, but on
the basis of syllabi, wrought out by collective wisdom, and with the
systematic co-operation of a few high schools that would give a little
time to it — .part here, part there. With such a method we might in a
few years, by bringing into fruitful union the psychologist and the
practical high school teacher who could work in freedom from college
domination, possess a mine of teachable moral worths that would have
a value and power of which we now little dream.
Discussion
FREDERIC ALLISON TUPPER '
HEAD MASTER OF THE BRIGHTON HIGH SCHOOL, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
First, the material side of the school must be given vastly more
attention than it has received up to this time. The generous play-
ground, the ample gymnasium, the suitable equipment of baths, lunch-
eons not too hygienic for " human nature's daily food," all have their
places in this problem. Let the sunlight into the schoolrooms at all
hazards. Spare not soap and water. If the old ventilating apparatus
is bad, have it torn out. Introduce some workable system of medical
inspection which, by its skilled prevention, will forestall many an ill-
ness. Introduce moisture into the air of the schoolroom. Cleanliness
is, indeed, next to godliness; so, furnish abundance of pure water, un-
stinted soap, and altogether too many towels.
Second, let that beauty which is truth characterize the school
building and all of its surroundings. A noble approach has much to
do with the architectural effect of a building. A noble building, nobly
approached, and nobly surrounded, is a perpetual moral lesson.
The interior of the building must correspond with the exterior in
dignity and truth. Broad corridors, wide stairways, ample class-
rooms, generous halls, waste no space, they are, as Emerson would say,
" pure use." In the decoration of the building is found a most admira-
ble opportunity of emphasizing the moral lessons of all time. When
the time of widely extended liberal culture shall come, many of the pale
casts and colorless photographs will be consigned to the museum, and
in their stead beautiful original wall-paintings by native artists will
fascinate with their beauty and elevate by their dignity. Such pictures,
appropriate to their surroundings, might well influence the beholders
forever.
Our secondary schools are largely a mirror of the times, so that
certain accepted elements of daily life must be eliminated before the
224 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
best results can be reasonably expected. With immoral books and
papers for sale on every hand, with immoral plays at many a theater, and
immoral bill-boards advertising the immoral plays, with immoral
critics who term indecency " virility," whereas it is merely bestiality,
the secondary schools have a problem of the most difficult nature.
The teacher's greatest influence is unconscious. There is a beauti-
ful winning quality called " charm," characteristic of the " brightest,
most consummate flower " of our civilization. When " charm " is
combined with high character and great abihty, there is a combination
of matchless power. Where can that combination be so essential as
in the profession of teaching? The voice of our Saviour said to the
tumultuous sea, " Peace!" and it was still. To the tumultuous heart
of youth, the spirit of loving-kindness, of the gentleman, of the gentle-
woman, speaks with unconscious power and charm, and that stormy,
impulsive heart grows calm. And so I welcome every measure that
will improve the quality of our teaching force, for with them more, than
with any other element in the discussion, are " the issues of life."
The best men and women, no matter what the cost of their services,
are the only suitable guardians of the moral training of our boys and
girls. In consequence of the number of such men and women in the
profession of teaching, much more progress in moral training in second-
ary schools has been made than many eminent authorities suppose.
Some gentlemen tell us that our public schools are Godless and
utterly irreligious! I deny the statement utterly. From an experi-
ence of twenty-five years in these schools I say that good progress is
made in the moral and religious training of our youth in these schools.
If the various communities desire more of this instruction than their
children are now getting, they have every facihty for making their
wishes known. It may be that a more widely extended use of text-
books of moral and of mental science would be productive of good,
but such books must be as unsectarian as sunlight, air, and water.
Some years ago I had in my school-building two small, poorly lighted,
badly ventilated recitation-rooms, and a dark passageway between
them. I had the partition knocked out, and with what result? There
is one broad, sunlit, airy classroom. If there is to be still more moral
and religious training in the secondary schools, it must be moral and
religious, with all the sectarian partitions knocked out, so that the air
and sunshine of God, unrestrained by the devices of man, may per-
meate the'school where his children meet on equal terms.
HAS THE READING OF LATIN AND GREEK LITERATURE
ANY EFFECT, FAVORABLE OR UNFAVORABLE,
UPON THE MORALS OF PUPILS ?
PRINCIPAL WILLIAM T. PECK, Sc.D.
CLASSICAL HIGH SCHOOL, PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND
The question assigned for the hour was probably put into this form
in order to arouse attention and to cause the teacher to consider his
obligations in the line of moral training. The question is very narrow.
The word " pupils " indicates that it limits the reading of Latin and
Greek literature to that pursued under the direction of teachers. The
Departmental Session of the Religious Education Association, in which
we are gathered, narrows the scope of the question further and causes
it to limit the reading to that pursued under the direction of teachers
of secondary pubUc schools. The view of ancient life seen in the
literary works of Hesiod, Pindar, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes,
Plato, Aristotle, and Demosthenes, or of Plautus, Terence, Lucretius,
Cicero as philosopher, Horace, the elegiac poets, Tacitus, Juvenal,
and Marcus Aurelius, must be banished from our minds. The range
of Latin and Greek literature read in the secondary public schools is
small, and consequently its presentation of life is limited. The amount
read in Greek consists of selections from the Anabasis or Hellenica of
Xenophon and from the Iliad of Homer, in all about three hundred
pages; in Latin-selections from Caesar's Gallic War or Civil War,
selections from Ovid, the Catiline of Sallust, eight orations of Cicero,
and six books of Virgil, in all about four hundred pages. The ques-
tion, then, is, what effect has the reading of these seven hundred pages of
Greek and Latin literature upon the morals of the pupils ?
If the young person, upon entering the high school, is asked if murder,
stealing, lying, cruelty, insolence, and disobedience to proper authority
are right, he will at once answer, No; if he is asked if love, honesty,
truthfulness, kindness, respect, and obedience are right, he will surely
answer. Yes. From the very beginning the high school teacher relies
upon his pupil's knowledge of right and wrong, and confidently asks if
this is right and that is wrong. He feels that, if the pupil does the best
that he knows, his conduct will be satisfactory, both within school and
without. The teacher recognizes the difficulty of this doing of the
best in accordance with knowledge, arising from indifference, stubborn-
ness, and temptation to wrong. He desires to join with whatever forces
225
226 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
there are around the youth, it may be with the church, the home, and
companions, in endeavoring to kindle the desire and direct the will, so
that right may be followed. The greatest power in this direction is
the example, character, and sympathy of the teacher. This may be
shown in all his life, in set moral talks, but one of the places where it
most naturally appears is in the study of literature. In the poets and
the great prose writers, from the gems of thought and the lives of men,
can be drawn those lessons by the believer in them and the practiser of
them that will render virtue most desirable and of the greatest value,
and vice most despicable and of the greatest loss. If the student is
often brought into the thought of the true and the good, and if invita-
tion to the nobler and the better is come and not go, it is evident, if the
methods of all the great moral teachers of the ages are true, that some
favorable effect will be produced upon his moral character. Can the
selected portions of Latin and Greek literature afford such an oppor-
tunity to the true teacher? When, years ago, Latin, Greek, and mathe-
matics were the only studies of the preparatory schools, were there not
teachers famous for the moral power in their teaching ? And to-day
our teachers cannot fail to use for moral influence this material which
is brought to their hands.
The Latin read during the first year consists of fables, the Viri
Romffi, and a book of Caesar. The pupil enters the high school with
a receptive mind and ready sympathy. A new world of thought is
opened before him, all the more eagerly grasped at because new. Then
is the time to impress upon him the great lessons of right modes of
thought and action, of love of home, of parents, and of country. The
fable is especially valuable along this line. The work in the Viri Romae
takes the pupil farther in the same direction, by creating in him an
interest in the deeds and virtues of Rome's greatest men. Devoted
patriotism, self-sacrifice and bravery, filial affection, courage m danger,
true friendship, and a high sense of honor are illustrated in concrete
form. These stories coming, down through the ages, the young student
takes in with his Latin verb and his Latin vocabulary, and makes them
a part of his life.
Next comes Caesar. We read three books of his Commentaries on
the Gallic War. I follow the programme of my school, because I know
what moral teaching is given there. One of my teachers used the
second and third books with her class to draw out the qualities of a
great commander. The following topics from the first book show how
other teachers find the opportunity for moral instruction: In chapter
seventeen, the duty of a citizen, — if your companions are acting
CLASSIC LITERATURE AND MORAL TEACHING 227
treacherously, ought you to tell those in authority? — in chapter nine-
teen, the treachery of Dumnorix and Caesar's respect for the feelings of
Divitiacus; in chapter twenty, the motives that influence Divitiacus to
plead for his brother; in chapter twenty-two, the hasty and inaccurate
observations of Considius that defeat Caesar's plans, while Labienus
obeys orders of Caesar under trying circumstances; in chapter twenty-
five, Caesar sets his men an example by removing his own horse; in
chapter twenty-seven, ought the Helvetians, after surrendering, to try
to escape by flight, because the opportunity seems good ?
We come next to the Catiline of Sallust. It cannot be said that
here there is no opportunity for moral instruction, for the work is al-
most a moral treatise. It deals with such subjects as the powers of
man and their proper use, the noble character of the early Romans,
the introduction of luxury and vice into Rome, the causes of Roman
greatness, and the characters of Csesar and Cato in comparison, the
character of Catiline and his associates, and the great conspiracy. The
introduction affords opportunity for moral instruction upon its every
line, the main part of the work upon every page. Two teachers give
me more than sixty places where they have spontaneously developed
moral lessons. A view of their scope may be obtained by mentioning
some of these in order :
Exertion necessary for development; mind godlike, everlasting;
character dependent upon the active virtues, " labore, continentia,
aequitate"; Sallust's stress upon the activity of the mental powers and
the subordination of the physical, which makes a deep impression upon
pupils; the powerful constructive force Catiline could have been, had
his tendencies been in the right direction; generous treatment of friends;
respect for age and experience; valor and glory the ideal; how in-
dividuals and consequently states retrograde; contrast in methods of
securing ends; causes of corruption of army; evils of luxurious living.
From the orations of Cicero against Catiline similar lessons can be
drav^Ti. But instead of the moral criticism of Sallust we study the
burning words of the leader of the forces of government in his endeavor
to put down rebellion. The impassioned orator speaks in order to
accomplish something; we get the moral lessons at first hand. In addi-
tion, we have the works in the surpassing literary form of one of the
world's greatest orators, and the attractiveness of the clothing adds
to the impressiveness of the lesson. The student cannot fail to consider
the real friends and foes of one's country, the character of the forces of
good and of evil, the uses of mercy and of justice, the power of conscience,
the interposition of divine providence, the eternal rewards of a noble
228 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
memory, and chiefly the duties of citizenship and the love of coun-
try.
In the oration in behalf of Archias, Cicero dwells upon the advan-
tages of a liberal education, the value of poetry and literary studies,
the lessons found in the lives of the noblest men whose deeds are recorded
in literature, and the advantage of the employment of one's time in
literary pursuits rather than in leisure and dissipation. How easy is
the step in this refining and elevating discussion of the attractiveness of
the intellectual life to pass to the necessity of the high moral life for the
completion of the perfect character!
Xenophon, the follower of Socrates, in his lucid and picturesque
narration of the Anabasis, leaves no doubt of his attitude towards right
and truth. Among the many passages that afford opportunity for
moral training none are more suggestive than the masterly character
sketches of Cyrus, Proxenus, and Men on. In less than two lines he
brings out the integrity of two slain heroes. " Neither did any deride
them as being cowardly in war nor blame them for faithlessness in
friendship." In the fifth book, with what sarcasm and scorn does
he hold up the folly of mob rule and the evils of Judge Lynch; with
what pathos does he set forth the meanness of ingratitude. " But
verily it is noble indeed, and just and devout, and more pleasing, to
make mention of good acts rather than of evil."
We come next to the poets. Here we expect that the seers will
show us the real. The grace of poetic form is like a precious case for
the moral thought. The selections from Ovid furnish rich gems from
the. storehouse of mythological lore. It is the golden age that honors
the sterling virtues: " Sine lege fidem rectumgue colebat." In the iron
age, when wickedness is rampant, there is no place for them: " Fugere
pudor verumgue fidesque." Deucalion and Pyrrha were saved from
the flood for their righteousness: " Non illo melior quisquam nee
amantior cequi vir fuit, ant ilia metnentior ulla deoruni." In the words
of Apollo to Phaethon is found freedom of the wiU and responsibility
in choosing: " Man the architect of his own fortune." " Placeat
sibi quisque licebit." When a class was asked, why the daughters of
the sun were changed to trees, the answer was given that too long grief
became rebeUion against the gods. Battus sacrificed truth and fidelity
for reward: " Posiqua?n est merces geminata." What is that but an
early instance of " graft." In the description of envy which is portrayed
with a master's hand, there is found in the phrase, Supplicumque suum
est, the thought that man is his own worst enemy, and so virtue is its
own reward. Medea presents an instance where the head is right and
CLASSIC LITERATURK AND MORAL TEACHING 229
the heart wrong: " Video tneliora proboque, deteriora sequor." Phile-
mon and Baucis illustrate frank, honest living within one's means:
" Paupertatemqiie fatendo effecere lebem nee iniqua mente ferendo.'" It
is not necessary to say that here is an example of " The Simple Life."
The other epic poet is Homer. Scholars call him a universal poet.
Broad as humanity, he covers all stages of life, presented not as criticism,
but as simple, natural, real living. The Greeks regarded the Homeric
writings as a great religious book, and looked upon them as authority
in argument and 'practice. Some modern writers join Homer with the
Bible and Shakespeare as the great expounders of life. I claim with my
pupils that all the^drudgery of the study of Greek is richly rewarded in
the reading of Homer's Iliad. From what has been said it is evident
how this story of life can be employed by the teacher to have a favorable
effect upon moral character.
From the foregoing survey it is evident that there is a large field for
moral instruction, of which good use is made by the classical teachers,
but it is very difficult to measure the direct effect of such instruction
upon the character of the pupils. These effects must consist in en-
larging and strengthening the moral impulses that lead to nobler,
stronger character. The test is life, its opportunities and temptations.
Therefore, while the teacher may not expect to see much more than the
aroused interest and the occasional advance in character-building, he
will steadily continue his work, as the gardener, though he does not
create, moves his plants into the sunshine, in the behef that the thinking
of moral thoughts, the discussion of moral themes, the passing of moral
judgments, and the awakening of sympathy with moral endeavors will
give strength to the moral purpose.
Discussion
PRINCIPAL EUGENE D. RUSSELL
LYNN CLASSICAL HIGH SCHOOL, LYNN, MASSACHUSETTS
The real subject is. Has the reading of four books of Caesar's
Gallic war, four books of Xenophon's Anabasis, and six or seven of
Cicero's orations, with a sprinkling of Viri Romae and Nepos for
])rose, and six books of Virgil's ^neid, four books of Homer's Iliad,
and a few hundred lines of Ovid's Metamorphoses for poetry, any
effect on the morals of pupils? For this is as close as the average
secondary school comes to dealing with classical literature first-hand.
It becomes, then, a question of how far morals are affected by the
story of the campaigns of a Roman general, told with an eye single
230 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
to his own glory, with no fear of reviewers and newspaper correspond-
ents, and with the omission of details that might shock the sensibiHties
of pagan civilization — a story in which btiUdog tenacity and organized
brute force succeed in wresting freedom and territorial independence
from Hberty-loving peoples — a war which might, if its lesson is grasped,
serve to justify the action of England in South Africa and Russia in
Finland and Manchuria. To the youthful mind, at least, success
is the test of right. One of the first lessons an American boy learns
from his country's history is that a successful rebellion is a revolution,
whose instigators are patriots, while an unsuccessful revolution is a
rebellion, whose instigators are traitors. The lesson the boy learns,
then, from the Gallic war is, if you are a bully, be a bully till you
beat; if you are not a bully, do not resist a bully, for he will beat you
if you do — a lesson not altogether elevating.
Second, how are morals affected by another personal narrative of
how ten thousand hired butchers escaped being slaughtered them-
selves, through the shrewdness and caution of the impersonal narrator ?
This furnishes a complete code of ethics for marauders of the burglar
and tramp type, showing how it is possible, through excessive greed,
to get into a very tight box, but that through courage and caution it
is possible to escape, where cowardice and rashness would be fatal —
a lesson not without practical value.
Third, how are morals affected by seven speeches of a smug, ego-
tistical lawyer and orator, in which the right triumphs and the moral
teaching is obviously correct, in which with Cicero we admire Archius
and the power of verse, or detest Verres and the depravity of provincial
graft ? But the moral teaching of the Catilinarian orations is weakened
by the display of sophistry by which the prosecutor prevails upon the
senate to violate the constitutional rights of his fellow-citizens, and
by the nauseating egotism of the self-righteous orator, who leaves with
us the impression that he was not half the man that the traitor Catiline
was. These three fragments, with detached biographical scraps out
of their settings, constitute the prose of secondary school classic litera-
ture. In poetry, the stories of the fall of Troy, the quarrels of the
Greeks, ^neas's wanderings and Dido's undoing, together with a
few of the least suggestive of Ovid's Metamorphoses, complete the
anthology. That nearly all the separate episodes in all these frag-
ments teach lessons of fortitude, patience, and temperance is beyond
dispute, but justice often appears with a weighed balance-beam in
the record of real life, while in poetic fiction the will of the gods is
made the all-sufficient excuse for any act of meanness or ingratitude,
howeverlbase.
CLASSIC LITERATURE AND MORAL TEACHING 231
But it would indeed be surprising if books written with no ethical
purpose should prove satisfactory text-books of ethics, or if poems
that were consistent with a mythological pagan code of morals should
satisfy the demand of a twentieth-century Christian civilization. But
the question calls for the actual rather than possible effects. My
answer is brief. With a single exception I have discovered no effect
on the morals. When we consider the infinite pains pupils take to
make translations absolutely devoid of sense and the homoeopathic
doses of the text at rather long intervals, resulting in only a slight
comprehension of the connection, I doubt if the ethical effect of the
content is a measurable quantity.
The secondary school pupil — and teacher too, for that matter —
is compelled by the conditions and limitations under which he works
to regard the text as the vehicle for syntax and training in guessing
or inference, rather than as a setting for ethical principles. The teacher
who takes from his scant time any considerable part or frequently
diverts the attention of his pupils from the linguistic demands in order
to point a moral is just so far sacrificing the aims of classical study.
There is, however, one unfavorable effect, very subtle and inevitable,
which springs from the study of the mythological allusions with which
classical poetry is replete. Examples of human weakness and vice
are bad enough when described in their coarseness, repulsiveness, and
eventual bitterness, but when vice and lasciviousness are deified and
made attractive, and when, with an ingenuity that is devilish and an
art that is divine, stories of wantonness are told with a beauty, sug-
gestiveness, and intensity that makes the blood of youth tingle and the
imagination run riot, then our boys and girls are put to a severe
moral test. The sins of Noah, Lot, David, and Sampson are not ren-
dered attractive in the Bible narrative, and the lesson they teach serves
as a warning, but the detailed accounts of the amours of the gods with
mortals are fascinating; instead of being a warning against it, they are
an invitation to lust, and they magnify the carnal above the spiritual.
For this reason it seems to me unfortunate that our scheme of educa-
tion opens this " Pandora's box " at the most critical and excitable
period of the youth's physical and emotional development. How-
ever, I see no remedy for this evil and have no protest to make.
In conclusion, as some geniuses can make music on the crudest instru-
ments, so the essayist could undoubtedly make Mother Goose the basis
for ethical instruction, but we must admit that it is the man rather
than the matter that contributes to the result. As compared with
English literature and history, the ancient classics offer no advantage
that will warrant diverting them from their present uses to texts on ethics.
THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AS A MEANS OF
IMPLANTING HIGH MORAL IDEALS
MR. D. O. S. LOWELL
MASTER IN THE ROXBURY LATIN SCHOOL, ROXBURY, MASSACHUSETTS
Not much of English that may be called " literature " is immoral;
a larger portion is perhaps wwmoral, being negative in its quality;
but most of the English literature taught in school or college, either
directly or indirectly makes for morality. Such are my premises;
if they are admitted, the conclusion is obvious: the study of English
literature is a means of implanting high moral ideals.
But there is more to the topic, as I conceive it, than a mere agree-
ment on this fundamental assertion. Is it a valuable means? What
sort of literature should be taught? What method of presenting it is
most effective? These are some of the questions that are suggested
at the outset, and to some of these we will give our brief attention.
Improvement of the body leads to enlightenment, and enlighten-
ment to further improvement; and the same law holds in the region
of the mind. It is a universal experience that those who eat of the
tree of knowledge begin to perceive their nakedness and make haste
to become respectable. The Philistine who learns to enjoy a page
of Ruskin or a poem of Wordsworth finds that he has entered a new
world; he no longer
"With low-thoughted care
Confined, and pestered in this pinfold here,
Strives to keep up a frail and feverish being,
Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives " ;
his ideals are nobler; his horizon is broader; his hopes are brighter;
his face is set toward the east, and he begins to love light rather than
darkness. At last it may be that the day-star shall arise in his heart
and he shall come to hate his evil deeds.
Now, if the study of English literature is not only a means but a
valuable means of implanting high moral ideals, a practical question
that confronts us is. What authors shall we choose as being best adapted
to this end?
Naturally, no teacher or body of teachers will select for young minds
literature that is immoral. There is such that may fairly be termed
literature and that has been produced by English writers; but we
need not dwell upon it. Some of it, that is not corrupt at heart, may
232
THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 233
be pruned, without detriment to its force and with distinct gain to its
beauty and its truth, until it becomes serviceable. But a great wealth
of material lies at our hand that needs no editing. Of this sort, what
shall we choose ?
The first qualification that a book should possess is that of interest.
It should be a work that will enlist the intelligence, the sympathies,
and the imagination.
The intelligence needs to be kept on the alert. There is a subtle
appeal to a reader when a book assumes knowledge on his part slightly
in advance of his acquisition. It stimulates his pride; and if his
quickened thought does not bound forward by intuition to conclusions
hitherto undreamed of, his curiosity often will be piqued so that he will
explore the unknovm land and make delightful discoveries.
The sympathies should be stirred; for we are creatures of passion,
or at least we ought to be. To be cold and heartless, to be unemo-
tional and hopelessly serene, is a calamity.
A third element of interest is added by an appeal to the imagination.
Ideals are confessedly imaginary, for the most part. We aim at them
and do not expect to hit the white, yet are we justified in our endeavor ?
A second qualification besides interest, of which I should speak,
is that of style. This element adds charm to what is already inter-
esting of itself, or creates an interest in things otherwise unattractive.
Now, style is a term which we all understand, but which none of
us can quite successfully define. One is reminded of the small boy's
attempted definition of salt: "It's what makes pertaters taste bad
when yer don't put none on 'em "; for literature without style cannot
satisfy; it may nourish, but there is danger that it may also nauseate.
Le style, c'est Vhomme, like all epigrams, must not be pressed un-
duly; but it is scarcely too much to presume that the works of an
author which are in his best style come nearest to exhibiting his ideals
and are the most elevating of his product; and as a corollary to this,
broadly speaking, the better the style the better for our purposes is
the author.
Finally, I submit that in the choice of literature for a liberal edu-
cation, either in school or college, a certain amount should be chosen
possessing positive virtues; some that is not merely eloquent, pathetic,
euphonious, rhythmical, and above criticism, but that is also moral
and spiritual; some that is not merely great, but ennobling. Doubt-
less, if literature were chosen at random, much of it would be of this
character, for, as I have said before, the largest part of our literature
has a distinctly moral tone. But I believe it should be the conscious
234 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
purpose of those who determine school curricula to see that some of
the literature read shall make for righteousness beyond a cavil. I
believe the importance of this can scarcely be overrated because of
the impressibility of youth.
We come to our last consideration. What methods of implanting
moral ideals in the course of our teaching are most effective ?
The fact which we have just established, that books may implant
their own ideals without a medium, should be a warning to all who
are called to teach.
We should never stand in the way of the author that is being studied.
In a modern fable a window-blind is said to have cried with compla-
cency, " I open the way for the sun." We can imagine with what
cynic scorn a Diogenes, sitting in the darkened room, would have greeted
this remark. When great books are read in class it should be with
a minimum of comment. The teacher may interpret important pas-
sages by a sympathetic rendering, where subtle inflection, skilfull
accent, and clear enunciation may serve to rivet the attention to some
significant thought that might otherwise be unnoticed; but he should
beware lest he darken counsel by words without knowledge, or dilute
virile truth with weak remark. All supererogatory effort at gilding
gold and adding an exoteric odor to fragrant flowers is more to be de-
plored than even a loud-voiced " mastery of the obvious."
There is a possible danger, however, to be avoided. If we do not
need constantly to explain, we need frequently to ask, Understandest
thou what thou readest ? and often unexpectedly it will be found that
some one does not, except some other — teacher, or preferably pupil —
shall guide him.
A somewhat varied experience has convinced me that truths which
pupils can be induced to discover for themselves enter into their moral
consciousness in a way which they will not when they are extracted,
clarified, condensed, and seasoned by the professional instructor, and
then stuffed into receptive but unassimilating brains. Therefore I
suggest that one of the methods useful in implanting high moral ideals
of any sort is to let the pupil do a good deal of the planting himself —
under guidance.
I have already intimated that good reading on the part of the in-
structor is a most etflcacious means of fixing the attention of a class
upon a noble thought. In this way such passages as —
" Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself has said,
'This is my own, my native land! ' "
THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 235
"It did depend on one, indeed;
Behold himi — Arnold Winkelried!"
"They conquered — but Bozzaris fell,
Bleeding at every vein! "
"Forever float that standard sheet!
Where breathes the foe but falls before us!
With Freedom's soil beneath our feet,
And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us!"
Such passages as these will make a brave boy's heart beat higher, and
sow within it the undying seeds of patriotism. A simple reading of,
or an apt quotation from, that great elegy which Wolfe professed he
would rather have written than to be the captor of Quebec; or an
introduction to Lincoln's especial favorite,
" Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? "
will serve without explanation, to show that life is short, and that they
who design to labor must labor while it is day. Portia's exquisite
plea for mercy, and her description of earthly power when it seems
likest God's should be learned by heart and left like a good seed to
germinate; and the same may be said of many another passage by
the great masters. Let them first be studied in the context that their
full force may be felt, then committed to memory and stored like a
precious jewel in the head.
Let me briefly summarize. I have assumed that the study of Eng-
lish literature is a means of implanting high moral ideals. Next I
have endeavored to show that it is a valuable means. I have examined
the sort of literature required to further this object, and find it may be
discussed under four heads: that which is not immoral; that which
possesses interest, appealing to the intelligence, the sympathies, and
the imagination; that which has style; and that which directly incul-
cates moral and spiritual truths. I have expressed my conviction of
the supreme importance of implanting moral ideals during the periods
of childhood and adolescence. And lastly I have come to discuss,
from a somewhat personal standpoint, what seems to be the most
effectual means of accomplishing this purpose. I have stated some
things that I believe the teacher should not do, and also a few means
that it would be helpful to employ. I come, in closing, to what I shall
maintain is the teacher's principal function.
You look into the face of a mirror, and an image is before you —
more truthful, if less flattering, than that which the photographer pro-
duces. You pass on, and another comes and looks into the same mirror;
but it tells no tales of you, revives no recollection. A thousand per-
236 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
sons pass before the glass, and when the day is done, it is just as bril-
liant and just as vacant as when it made its first reflection. Do we
desire a Hkeness that shall endure. Science must come to our aid with
its camera and its chemicals; the image must be caught upon a sen-
sitized plate of film and then fixed so it shall not fade.
In like manner the teacher may hold up a truth before an untrained
pupil. It may be beautiful and inspiring, as reflected in the mirror of
the pupil's mind. He may understand it, assent to it, even enjoy it;
but he may also forget it as he looks upon the next picture. To pre-
vent such loss, it becomes the teacher's function to see that his pupil's
mind is not a mere mirror from whose polished surface glide these
bright images in swift succession, but a sensitized plate on which truths
may be photographed and fixed.
Rhythm, melody, harmony, choice of words, beauty of thought,
felicity of expression, taste, style, proportion, emphasis, unity, ease,
force, climax, simile, metaphor and alHed tropes, wit, humor, pathos,
suggestion, argument, exposition, narration, description, these are
some of the chemicals with which the English teacher works. With
these he produces the sensitive mind-plate according to his ability.
When all is ready, he exposes an object in the shape of a poem, a novel,
a play, an essay, an oration, or an epigram. A picture is the result,
to be fixed and developed by comparison, analysis, or some of the
minor devices to which I have referred.
But there are pictures and pictures; and just here is where the
teacher needs to be an artist. In the photographic studio it is not
enough to have a favorable light, expensive lenses, and the latest ar-
rangement of shutters and slides. It is not enough to have fair women
and brave men before the camera. It is not enough to have a perfect
plate, ready to respond to the faintest ray of Hght: there must also
be a skilled operator, who shall moderate the glare, arrange the shadows,
measure the distance, adjust the instrument, calculate the exposure,
pose the sitters, engage the attention, and at the psychologico-photo-
graphic moment spring the shutter.
In like fashion the artist-teacher deals with his carefully sensitized
pupil as he prepares to take a picture worth developing. Deftly he
arranges each detail and improves every condition; then he unveils
before him some image of truth and beauty wrought by skillful hands
and eagerly awaits the result. If he succeeds, he knows it without
troublesome delay. He glances swiftly about his class, detecting here
and there a pupil who responds, " his rapt soul sitting in his eyes ";
and the instructor glows with the consciousness that his labors have
not been in vain.
THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 237
Discussion
MR. A. J. GEORGE
MASTER IN THE NEWTON HIGH SCHOOL, NEWTON, MASSACHUSETTS
What is literature? Not mere writing, but writing which has reve-
lation, — revelation not of the facts (that belongs to science), but of
truths, the purpose of which is to inspire. Hence, it follows that the
element of time is a necessary factor in determining what is literature.
" A classic is that type of writing which has enriched the human mind,
increased its treasures, and caused it to advance a step; it has revealed
some moral truth, some eternal passion." " Around this," says Words-
worth, " with tendrils as strong as flesh and blood, our pastime and our
happiness will grow." To cultivate pastime and happiness is the main
business of every exercise in the English class room.
The reason why literature is such a power is that it is permanent
in its interest. Literature is neither ancient nor modern, but is as uni-
versal as the heart of man, and the heart of man aspires in three direc-
tions — in feeling, in thought, and in action. This is seen in the lyric, or
song, which is full of emotion, noble as contrasted with ignoble, revealed
by a singer; in the epic, full of thought and motion, revealed by a nar-
rator; in the dramatic, full of action, thought, and emotion, revealed
by men and women seen in typical situations.
Through literature, truth is revealed in forms of beauty, compelling
wonder, love, and admiration. " We live by admiration, hope, and
love." Look at the heights of our own peerless English literature —
from Chaucer to Arnold. They reveal the history of the race; each
height shows that period when the people were moved to aspire, when
the poets, the gleemen, and minstrels voiced these aspirations. Brown-
ing, in the " Grammarian's Funeral," reveals one of these, when he
says, "Leave now for dogs and apes, man has forever."
Do you believe that students who catch the inspiration of such teach-
ers can remain unmoved ? I know they cannot. Every man is judged
by his ideas of conduct on the one hand, and of beauty on the other,
and the source of such ideas in men and nations is the world's revela-
tion in its literature. It everywhere teaches us what to love and what
to hate, whom to honor and whom to despise. Its word is not knowl-
edge, but power; its purpose, not that man should know more, but thait
he should be better. Hence, its business is not with things, and their
laws, but with persons and their thoughts. We must not read for knowl-
edge, for specialized learning, but for life; our business is to create
readers, — readers of this great movement of the human soul to its high-
est realm of thought and action.
238 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Thus it is evident that there may be a method of dealing with this
literature, which is akin to immorality. When attention of the pupil
is directed to those elements which in themselves have no vitality be-
cause they are devoid of any power to inspire, interest dies, and with the
death of interest comes the dislike of the subject. Such a result is
immoral.
It follows thus that literature is but one of the forms of art through
which man's aspiration, his ideals, are revealed. The soul of man
takes the hues of that which environs it. It is literature which in-
spires; not linguistics, rhetoric, and grammar, valuable as these
may be for other purposes. It is subtle, and mysterious in its power,
and it is our business as teachers to create a nation of readers, not
a special class of learned commentators. We know that literature
will form the child, sustain the youth, and console age, and its history
is its record of power in this direction, from the psalms of David to the
songs of Burns, from Job to Tennyson. Witness the tributes of Darwin
and Mill to the power of imaginative literature; these men mourned
the fact that other things deprived them of that great power of culture
of the feelings which the love of literature brought. Barrie has said that
a young man may be better employed than in going to college; but when
there, he is unfortunate if he does not meet some one who sends his life
ofif at a new angle. " One such professor," says he, " is the most any
university may hope for in a single generation." He says, " When you
looked into my mother's eyes, you knew why it was that God sent her
into the world; it was to open the eyes of all who looked to beautiful
thoughts, and that is the beginning and end of literature." After having
opened the eyes of people to beautiful thoughts, we must be willing to
wait, for moral results do not come immediately. Read our great liter-
ature in such a way that the class feels the enthusiasm, nobility, and
the naturalness of the men and women revealed, and then we shall
never have to ask the question, " Is there any moral result from the
study of literature ?"
THE AIMS AND PROCESSES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT
FRANK H. ROBSON
HEAD MASTER BANCROFT SCHOOL, WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS
To train a man in the science of numbers, and not to teach him that
he is not to make false combinations; to train him in the art of writing,
and not to teach him that he is not to forge his employer's name; to
train him in the secrets of chemistry; and not to train him to respect his
hidden and mysterious power over the life and welfare of his fellows;
to give intellectual judgment only, and not to train moral judgment, —
would be an abomination and a curse to the world.
Mentality unleavened by the preserving power of morahty, or un-
touched by the inspiration of religion, opens the door wide to the flood
of materialism, immorality, and crime.
Generally speaking, the child has three periods of growth — infancy,
childhood, and adolescence. The home must bear the responsibilities
of the first period, but the school must prepare itself in spirit and equip-
ment for a share of the training of the second, the so-called period of
childhood.
What, then, is this creature of five to seven years of age as he is usually
turned into school life? Can we make of him what we will? What
elements assist and what influences hinder us in our labors ?
Taking childhood to begin with the dawn of conscious power, the
child in this period runs through all the phases of individualism, a crea-
ture of instincts, with no moral or immoral quality at the beginning,
seeking self-expression in all things.
This individualism stands psychologically at the basis of such home
and school complaints as stubbornness, selfishness, impertinence, quar-
relsomeness, and disobedience. This is the law of the survival of the
fittest; morality of action is excluded; the animal instincts are seek-
ing expression and gratification. This is one of nature's efforts to break
the shackles of the past, to make an advance upon heredity, to open
new fields, to function new-brain centers, and unconsciously to extend
individual development along the line of evolutionary possibilities.
Manifold stimuli effect a development of the child, regardless of moral
content as viewed by adults, and gradually the functioning of the organs
is accomplished. The child learns the corresponding values which
adults attach to varying actions and states only by the effects produced
upon others which are directly or indirectly reflected upon himself in
239
240 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
pleasure of approval or pain of disapproval and punishment. Thus
repeating those actions which bring pleasure and satisfaction and
avoiding those which bring pain and disapproval, tendencies become
established and laws are gradually outlined in the nervous system.
John Fiske's law of the prolonged state of infancy of the human race
has many moral as well as physical and mental correlations. The
child is long dependent in body, mind, and moral standards. His vo-
litional equipment is very meager. He does not know what is right.
His capacity for discrimination is exceedingly small, and when he ap-
parently exercises such precocious discriminating intelligence, it is rather
an imitated state of mind, and not a developed functional capacity.
In the light of these prominent traits, what is the point of attack in
these earlier years ? and how can we develop effective character without
a direct and disastrous conflict of will, destructive to strength, or a
weakening of the imagination, fatal to future growth and initiative, and
bring about a willing submission to law, parental, scholastic, and civil,
an appreciation of the pure and the right in moral relations, and effect
a real character, symbolized in the word ' self-control ' ?
Imitation is the dominant faculty of the young. It is the school of
the animal world. It is the process by which the experience of the past
and the practice of the present may be brought within the absorptive
radius of the child. Mentally, childhood is the period of memory power
of the reproduction of previous states. Likewise in the moral world,
it is the period of reproduction and imitation; and the environment
supplied by teachers, parents, and playmates supphes the concrete
forms of speech and action to be imitated. Not being able to reason
correctly and to discriminate moral values in the adult sense, there is
great danger in unselected environment. Potency of action in the child
is as liable to discharge itself in imitating a bad environment as a good
one.
Inasmuch as a child cannot select from its environment suitable
details for imitation, and has no personal standards of action, obedience
to some authority becomes a necessity. Through imitation of a selected
environment, aided by the exercise of a wise authority, there is repro-
duced in the child life a series of activities, and through them there is
developed the germ of a personal consciousness of truly moral conduct.
By using the highest motive which is effective, by inducing a pleasurable
mental state by the effects of emulation and appreciation, proper lines
of work become chosen more and more consciously, and the habit of
right performance becomes established.
Right habits at the direction of another are good but they are not
PROCESSES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT 241
moral. Hence the parent or teacher must gradually withdraw his in-
fluence or authority and give the child the privilege of choice. Blind
obedience is only for the undeveloped child; arrested moral growth must
surely follow if the ability to decide personal questions is present and
the opportunity is not afforded. As the powers increase, the opportu-
nities of choice must increase also. As nature teaches by punishing the
violator of her laws, so through making mistakes and suffering the pen-
alty therefrom the individual develops the capacity of choice and wise
direction of his own affairs. The true test of the effectiveness of the
training in obedience, in the establishment of right habits, and the power
of a moral choice, is the growing conscious intention of the child.
One of the common causes of difficulty in moral training springs
from the fact that the child needs interpretation as well as guidance.
Physically, the automatic ganglion centers are developed first, then those
of the main muscular movements, then the centers affecting sensation,
and finally the ganglion centers controlling thought and will. Physical
and mental processes are so definitely connected, that they follow in
logical order; that the proper functioning of one stage depends upon a
vigorous development of each preceding stage; that abnormal develop-
ment of later stages, known as precocity, destroys later vitaUty, and un-
due emphasis upon a lower process prolongs elementary stages, and
thus produces " arrested development."
The only logical order of moral training is to be found in a true genetic
development of moral capacities. Undoubtedly, in a large and untech-
nical way the successive evolutionary moral states of the race are repro-
duced in the individual, but specifically the moral basis is to be found in
the parallel development of his nervous and mental systems. Hence
the necessity for wise interpretation on the part of parents and teachers.
Fatigue, illness, hunger, depressed nervous vitaHty, physical suffering,
may easily make normal mental action almost impossible for the child,
and additional pressure, either personal or disciplinary, is not only
blindly stupid, but is criminal. Wliat the child needs is, not the mental,
moral, or physical rod, but food, sleep, medicine, sympathy and love,
and restful words. Ignorance, inability, and fear are frequently wrongly
interpreted as unwillingness and opposition.
But the largest opportunity for the teacher is in the guidance of these
changing conditions. Remembering that vigorous functioning of ele-
mentary powers is necessary to later growth, we must beware how we
limit later possibilities by attempts at repressing and destroying certain
normal expressions of child life. Expect the child to be individualistic,
to be selfish, to relate everything to himself, to be proud of his home.
242 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
his father, and his big brother. Many things that would appear ego-
tistic and selfish in a man or youth who has had opportunity to learn
altruism and self-control appear normal in a child. The frank acknowl-
edgement of personal pride, combativeness, and open self -approbation,
tend to establish an individuality and a confidence which show later in
the man of executive vigor and personal initiation. Do not destroy
these qualities or impede their vigorous functioning. They are the most
hopeful signs of future success. Repress and destroy them, and you have
the timid goody-goody, who sits with folded hands and blushing cheek,
afraid to call his soul his own, and always waiting as a child and adult
to do another's bidding.
A strong individuality is the true starting-point; temper it gradually,
show the beauty and joy of helping others, punish conscious wrong,
teach justice, mercy, and forgiveness, let the playground fully show the
danger of infringing on the rights of others, but let not the teacher antici-
pate or infringe upon nature's laws. This is effective training of the
will — this formation of the habit of right and vigorous performance
after the emotions have been brought before the bar of the intellect and
found worthy.
If Schopenhauer is right in saying that we are two thirds will and
one third intellect, then the end of education is not knowledge, but
character. The end of discipline is, not to preserve order, but to
develop independent men and women, and the test of any training is
the increment of character gradually given. Development and
discipline thus assume their proper places. Development is positive,
discipline is negative; development is progressive, discipline is repres-
sive; the more you have of the one, the less you need of the other; the
more completely the normal needs of the growing child and youth are
supplied, the less need will there be for repressive discipline. The
more you fill the mind with high ideals and right performance, the less
need will there be to fight against low practices; the more moral ozone
you can infuse into the air, the less you will need to fight the germs
of bad conduct.
I must hasten to say a few closing words about the means of moral
training ready at the hand of the teacher. If we remember that in pri-
mary stages we are to develop clear conceptions; in grammar stages,
rules of conduct and clear moral concepts; and in adolescence, altruism
and social and spiritual relations and obligations, — the whole school life
becomes luminous with opportunity to the inventive teacher. The
proper and necessary punctuality, regularity, courtesy, and quick obe-
dience of school routine form a basis for training moral habits. Com-
PROCESSES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT 243
pelled labor after imperfect work, the results of failure, school punish-
ments, and public opinion stimulate a proper exercise of personal effort.
Social obligations, the yielding of the selfish interest, class and school
organizations and interests open wide the door to altruism. Honors,
influence, personal pride, and leadership may, under wise suggestion,
hold out alluring arms of invitation.
In the curriculum, the study of literature, expressing the struggles,
hopes, ambitions, and developing sentiments of the race, furnishes a
never empty spring of moral inspiration. The moral tales of fable and
Biblical lore, with their definite pictures exercising and cultivating the
imagination, drawn from the childhood of the race, and expressing the
fundamental virtues of kindness, obedience, filial and parental love,
supply both mental and moral sustenance for the younger children.
The natural appreciation of the good and great men and women of polit-
ical history, of commerce and science, of literature and music, their
manners, habits, their successes and failures, with their mixture of theo-
retical and practical standards, related to actual personal needs, may
well be used with inspiring and vitalizing force in the later grades; while
to the budding soul of adolescence, living again the hopes, ambitions,
and sentiments of the race, when the conflicting obligations of self-de-
velopment and altruism are presented with alluring attractiveness, when
emotions are struggling for interpretation and utterance, the varying
fields of the world's literature interpret anew the inner life, presenting
to the intellect and the imagination complete pictures of the world's
idealism and sober facts.
History, with its examples of heroism, patriotism, and devotion, with
its pictures of base, selfish, and traitorous lives, constantly demands a
weighing of moral values, and shows the permanence of truth, goodness,
and moral worth in aiding the progress of the individual and the
race.
Science, with its unending search after truth, with its conformity to
known law, its emphasis of necessary cause and effect, its accuracy of
thought and statement, induces not only a search for truth, but a con-
scious belief in its necessity in all the relations of life.
Manual training, emphasizing the dignity of labor, the value of
personal effort, the consciousness of creative powers and constructive
capacity; gymnastics, bringing the physical system into conscious
sympathy and alliance with the mental nature; school gardens, bring-
ing the children back to the heart of Mother Nature; music, touching
the deepest springs of emotion and offering most delicate forms of
expression; school games, inducing self-control and the necessity both
244 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
of proper initiative and subordination, — all have a large value in
moral development.
There is still a large field for the direct and formal presentation of
moral standards, based upon the age and development of the pupils.
The opening exercises of the school may well seize upon some present
interest and illuminate it for the day and days to come. At proper
crucial periods of school life, the round of common duties and
fundamental virtues may be set forth. Under the influence of days
devoted to great men and historical events, the possibilities of man-
hood, and of lives devoted to humanity, country, and God, may well
be exalted.
France has developed a complete system of formal instruction in
morals and practical ethics, winning a grand prize at the Exposition
of 1900. Her effort has been to shift her entire national education
from a Catholic to an ethical basis. She has divided her scholars into
an infant section from 5 to 7 years; a primary section from 7 to 9 years;
an intermediate section from 9 to 11 years; and a junior section from
II to 13 years, with definite instruction in ethics adapted to the child
in the family, the school, the country, and his relation to himself and
to his God.
Plato was right when he taught that the problem of education cen-
tered in ethics. The greatest teachers have been men of profound
moral natures. Their personality has been their greatest possession;
by it they have been able not only to quicken mental power, but to give
a mighty spiritual upHft. Emerson's saying, " It makes very little
difference what you study, but it is in the highest degree important
with whom you study," means that, after all, education is a spiritual
process; that the mysterious influence of one nature on another is its
major factor; and that the atmosphere surrounding the work is in
the highest degree important. Text-books may supply the matter of
knowledge and of ethics, but the teacher supplies the electric spark,
without which all is a lifeless mass.
VII. ELEMENTARY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGION AND MORALITY
How Far, and How, Can the Foundations of Religion be
Laid in the Common Schools?
PROFESSOR EDWIN D, STARBUCK, Ph.D.
EARLHAM COLLEGE, RICHMOND, INDIANA
The controversy has grown acute, in a few of the states and in
many communities, over the teaching of religion in the common schools.
There is no Httle anxiety among the friends of religious education, be-
cause the law seems to be stepping between religion and the children.
I do not believe the anxiety is wellfounded. While I should be the
last to advocate the enactment of any measure that would limit the
utmost freedom of teachers, it seems to me that the reaction against
so-called religious instruction is a fortunate thing if only it disturbs us
into an appreciation of some of the more fundamental considerations
involved in the situation.
Whether the statement is true or false, I am going to assume, for
the sake of having the point at issue clearly before our minds, that
such a law exists, and is general in its appHcation, by which the Bible
and " religious " teaching of any kind are entirely excluded from the
schools; and then ask to what extent the freedom of any devout teacher
need be hampered in promoting the spiritual development of her pupils.
How far could she, without hedging, or working in any surreptitious
way, awaken in her pupils the spirit of religion ? My own conviction
is that she could keep the spirit and the letter of the law, if she is wise
in mind and heart, and still not find her deepest purposes materially
curtailed. Without formal religious instruction, what could be done
in the schools to arouse the religious impulses and develop the reli-
gious life ? I would suggest a revision along at least four lines, one of
which has reference to the teacher, the second to her methods and to
the curriculum, the third to our ideals about religion, and the fourth
to the child. The end in view is to hint, however imperfectly, the
possibility of a school, the whole of which shall in detail and in its en-
tirety contribute, either directly or indirectly, to the religious life. In
these suggestions there is no originality; neither is there in them an
impossible dream; for they are only the simple statement of what I
have found suggested in the actual experience of good teachers.
245
246 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
1. The ordinary secular school will be primarily a religious insti-
tution if the teacher is profoundly religious, cheerful, natural, livable,
and busy, to be sure, but having in the midst of it all an emancipated
spirit that lives behind the words, speaks through the actions, lends
color and quality to the thoughts , and breathes life and health into the
atmosphere of the entire school. We are coming to know, as never be-
fore, that there is nothing — motive, impulse, thought, inspiration — that
is not finding expression in the tone and quality of the whole person-
ality. Physiologists and psychologists are showing constantly that
every idea or state of feeling registers itself definitely and in an all-
pervasive way, though very minutely, in pulse-beat, nerve-tension, and
muscular reaction. It is coming to be demonstrably true that out of
the heart are the issues of life. There is nothing more pervasive than
character. Religion is as catching as wildfire. It is as contagious as
disease, or as sin. We knew all this, after a fashion, but shall not
have appreciated it at its full worth until the best, maturest, and largest-
spirited men and women are secured and retained in the teaching pro-
fession. There was a time when only the sages were teachers; we
stand now at the opposite extreme, when our teachers of children range
in age from sixteen years to the unspeakable age of thirty or thirty-five.
It is impossible for a teacher to teach what she hasn't got deep down
within her heart. This is the consideration of first importance. With
the right teacher, alive in mind and pure in heart, the question of keep-
ing the flame of religion burning while the necessary tasks of the school
day are performed will solve itself. To secure the proper teachers is in
part a matter of selection, and in part it is to be solved along the line
suggested above : aspiration toward the higher life is a step in its own
realization. If teachers felt their responsibility and their need, and
would pray earnestly and often the prayer of Socrates, " Ye gods,
make me beautiful within," the end would be much nearer.
2. The second point of revision has reference to the things to be
taught, and the method of teaching them. How can a teacher keep
from getting lost in the thousand petty details of school life and the
countless things she is expected to teach ? She can't. Nor should she
try. Part of the routine of the school or her own best life will have to
be sacrificed, and in the dilemma she had better save her soul and the
souls of her pupils. It is a long and sad story how we have mistaken
means for ends in education, and are making a great point of master-
ing the tools of knowledge, instead of concerning ourselves about wisdom.
We teach how to read, instead of reading; how to draw, instead of
drawing; how to cipher, instead of doing the actual thing that ciphering
THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGION AND MORALITY 247
will help us accomplish; and so on. It is as great folly as if a carpenter
should busy himself all his life making tools, and then get an inkling at
the end of his life that he might have made something worth while with
them. A safe rule might be, Teach only that which has some real
life -significance, both at the time it is being learned and for later life.
Learning merely for the sake of learning is rarely, if ever, excusable;
but of learning for the sake of appreciating and enjoying and growing,
we can never get too much. Here, I am inclined to believe, the fault
is as much with the teacher as with the curriculum. In following the
rule suggested above, there is not so much in the school that must of
necessity be excluded. The most formal, meaningless subject, under
one teacher's presentation, will, in the hands of a real teacher, be suf-
fused with life-significance. I have seen a class in geometry, after
some weeks of interpretation of what proofs in general and geometric
proofs in particular mean, what relation the subject has to the rest of
our thought life and its meaning to the actual interests of men, be-
come so enthused with the subject that occasionally, after some espe-
cially neat, clean-cut demonstration of a difficult problem, it would
break out in applause as spontaneously as if the demonstration had
been the rendering of some work of art — which it really was.
3. The next consideration has to do with our interpretation of this
thing we speak of so loosely as religion. It means a variety of things,
interpreted in all gradations, from the most crystallized stratum of con-
ventionalized religion up to the highest point in spiritual progress, and
all the way from the most intellectualized notions about God and duty
to the deepest springs of feeling and conduct. My appeal would be
that we read it out more than we do in terms of life — life at its growing
points, the life of each in relation to all, and in relation to his highest
sense of reality — and in terms of the spirit one carries into these rela-
tions. It is exactly this for which Christ came and lived, and it is this
for which every great reformer has existed. I have been profoundly
impressed, during recent months, in trying to figure out as dispas-
sionately as I could, from the Sermon on the Mount and the parables
and sayings of Christ, what his theology was, and what were his " doc-
trines " of ethics and religion. He lives and speaks with a higher au-
thority than reason. Instead of a theology, one finds an exalted sense
of a divine presence, which sometimes, for want of a better name, he
called " Father." Instead of a system of ethics, one finds the cup of
cold water, a warm, loving heart, and a clear vision that could see the
great truths of life reflected in growing seeds and plants and in working
men and innocent children. Try it yourself, and I believe you will
248 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
agree with me that there is not in it all a single thing that any citizen
of the United States, or any judge or jury or set of lawmakers, could put
under the ban, or would care to, as being " religious " teaching.
The problem of teaching religion in the schools without doctrine and
dogma would be easy enough, some of you are saying to yourselves,
and a very indefinite, unreal thing might be clear, if only we knew
what is meant by "reHgion," "the spiritual life," and such terms. I
must insist that, for the most part, they must remain indefinite. It
is the ever-recurring temptation, bred of inertia, to split up and dis-
sect and define and classify the things that belong primarily to our appre-
ciation or spiritual apprehension that has got religion into most of its
troubles. We know some things with our hearts better than we can
ever know them with our minds, and the verities of religion belong under
this head. I do not know why I love my friend, nor how, nor exactly
what I got out of the Fifth Symphony or the Sistine Madonna, but I
am not ashamed to go on drawing life from them in spite of the fail-
ure of my reason to analyze them. It is time religion should be as
direct and simple and fearless as is art.
There are, however, a few specific characteristics of religion that
we can agree upon, and that the schools may well cultivate, by way of
preparing the soil and sowing the seeds of the spiritual life.
(a) In the first place, there is the power to enter feelingly into some
thought-interest or into some occupation. Arnold's definition, " Re-
ligion is morality touched with emotion," is doubtless very faulty, but
it is among the best of the angular snap-shots of the actual religious
life of those who stand historically as the great spiritual leaders; and
a paraphrase of it, by slipping in the word " education " instead of
" religion," would be a good characterization of the ideals of the great
educational reformers. In all the list of studies and occupations in
the school, there are only the two bare exceptions — writing and spelling
—in which I cannot recall some teacher or teachers who aroused such
a happy, heartful response as to give them spiritual significance.
(6) A second element of religion and of good training is the habit
of responsiveness. To respond to the tasks that are set, to the teacher's
wish, and to the facts that lie about, is the condition of a good student;
to respond to persons and institutions and social forces is a primary
requisite of morality, just as social and civic callousness is the primary
root of evil and vice; responsiveness to the thoughts and sentiments of
persons and books, including the Bible, to personal ideals, to instinctive
promptings, and to unseen relations, is one of the primary sources of
religion; and responsiveness is a habit that can be cultivated. Through
THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGION AND MORALITY 249
variety in its exercise, the habit may pass over into a mood. The
teacher herself can widen the spirit involved in any habit or idea until
it passes over into related habits and ideas, and becomes finally a per-
sistent attitude. Here we have the responsibility falling back upon
the teacher again as to whether the manifold habits of responsiveness,
for the varied exercise of which the school is so full, shall break over
in the highest reaches of religion.
(c) A third element is to respond with a whole heart. This is
one of the differential marks of religion. It takes in the entire person-
ality. Religion is the response of the whole life to its fullest sense of
reality. This attitude can be cultivated in the schools. In so far as
there is good teaching, it will be. Our schools, with their choppiness
and mechanization, are instilling spot knowledge. They are fixing the
habit of responding to little things in a little way, instead of responding
to little things (if there are any) in a great way, or to great things with
a whole life.
(d) A most hopeful prophecy of better things in religious educa-
tion in the secular schools is a general depreciation, among psychologists
and educators, of intellectualism, a heightened sense of the value of
conduct, character, and social refinements, as ends of culture, and
especially a regard for what might be called intellectual tastes, as op-
posed to intellectual mechanics. The excessive analysis and dissecting
and hair-splitting and logic chopping, into which our school life has
tended to degenerate, defeats the ends of " intellectual " training itself,
and of " scientific " procedure.
If intellectualism defeats the ends of science, it also defeats religion.
The disease of religion to-day, if it has one big disease, is that it has
been over-intellectualized. Our theories about God, our beliefs formu-
lated in creeds and doctrines, give us pilules of religious truth, but
not exalted ideals and a warm sense of reaUty.
(e) An essential condition in all learning and also in rehgion is the
truth-seeking and truth-loving spirit. It is this spirit, together with an
assurance that the truth outside will become one's own, that is the con-
dition back of religious, scientific, or aesthetic insight and achievement.
It is this which gave Bunyan, Tolstoi, Fox and Wesley their hold upon
spiritual verities; it is this by which Helen Hunt Jackson, after months
of striving, found the plot of Ramona; by which Sir Rowan Hamilton
discovered as by a flash the quaternions; it is this attitude that Pro-
fessor Huxley is describing when he confesses that he came to give him-
self up to the leading of facts in a way which is best described by the
Christian doctrine of the surrender of the self to God. There is no
2SO THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
study in the school which cannot be used to cultivate the longing for
and dehght in the thing which lies just next. With little children the
thing just beyond will be a little thing; but as life widens and deepens,
the pleasure and delight should ripen into a hunger and thirst, and
the fact and deed should be enriched until they blossom into righteous-
ness.
(/) Nor must the truth be my truth simply. A decentralization of
the individual — the appreciation of his life and his truth as part of a
larger life and truth — are essential both in education and in religion.
It is undoubtedly the message of most religions to give the individual
a vivid sense of his relation to an Eternal Reality and to other persons.
This is also the keynote to the most general educational doctrine of the
present time, viz., the social end of school life, rather than the cultural
or utilitarian. The way of approach to this decentralization is in the
cultivation and right use of the imagination, by which the person can
transcend his own narrow limitations and make real in thought and
feeling the world of people and things outside.
This analysis of the common elements of education and religion
does not mean to be exhaustive. It is complete enough, however, to
suggest that for the occupations and studies of the school to blossom
into religion should be as natural as for a healthy tree to bear fruit.
4. The last point to consider in spiritualizing the secular schools
concerns itself with our understanding of the nature of children. We
are being taught nowadays that religion gets its content from the sum
of the instinctive endowments with which the individual is supplied
by nature; that the personal life is a spring in which there well up
the brute and the human instincts, the sum of which and the particular
blending of which give tone and coloring and quality and motive and con-
tent to the whole life, and determine personality and character. The
highest function of a teacher is to take this little germ of possibility, a
little child, and play upon its complex of instinctive endowments, and
bring out of them a beautiful harmony. A few instincts will have to
be repressed, over-shadowed, or even uprooted; some need stimulating,
while others need bringing up on to the highest levels of refine-
ment.
In so far as a dignified sense of God and a reverent appreciation of
life shall prevail, and to the extent that we can have men and women
in the teaching profession who have come into their own spiritual
heritage, the common school will become a life-giving and religion-
developing institution. Just to that extent will the quibbling over
" religion " in the schools be a thing of the past.
THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGION AND MORALITY 251
SARAH LOUISE ARNOLD
DEAN OF SIMMONS COLLEGE, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
We shall find the best and most natural illustrations of these
truths already stated in the lives of the children we know best. I
shall therefore call your attention to a few incidents of child life, which
will serve as my text.
I have in mind a four-year-old girl, favored in many things, but
especially happy in that she spends her summers on an island in a
beautiful lake, mountain-rimmed. She has always been privileged
to walk with her father and mother in the fields and woods; to " go
a-trudging," as she called it, has been her chief delight. " Where did
the trees get their red and yellow leaves?" she asked. " Who made
them red and yellow?" Her question answered, she ran to her mother
with her chubby hands filled with her new treasures, saying, "See,
Mamma! I have brought you some of God's beautiful leaves!"
"How came the island here?" she asked. "Who brought the
rocks and the trees?" She was told how the island was lifted into its
place; how the soil was formed, the trees planted, and the island made
ready for the birds, for the trees, for the rabbits, for the squirrels,
and for her, — just as her father had built the house for her, in which
she Hved. As the time for her return to her home approached, she
sat one evening watching the sunset and the early evening stars, and
said " Don't you hope that God will be at home when we get there,
just as He has been here this summer?" So linked with her love of
the beautiful in the world was her reverent thought of Him who had
made it beautiful.
Another child whom I knew — a country girl — received as a gift a
copy of Emerson's Parnassus. When the dishes had been washed
after supper, she went, with her precious book, out into the hay-field
and read and reread the poems she Hked best. Among them was
Bryant's " Lines to a Waterfowl." She is a woman grown, but she
says that the childhood experience is still fresh in her memory, and
with the lines there ever recurs to her thought the clear summer even-
ing, the fragrance of the new-mown hay, the crimson sunset, and the
dark figure of the distant bird, which her eye beheld as she read:
" Whither midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way ?
" He who from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will guide my steps aright,"
252 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
And here the teaching must begin. The twenty-third Psalm
brings to you and me its assurance of comfort and peace. How?
" He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside
the still waters." We knew in childhood the green pastures and still
waters; the tenderness of father and mother and friend interpreted for
us the loving Shepherd.
The elements of religious education are two, the teaching of nature
in childhood, and the living example of God's children — so that we
know Him through the life of our friends. Both these elements should
be contributed by the home. But the best of homes can be re-inforced,
and the poorer ones must be aided by the teachings of the school. The
best result of wisely directed nature-study is that it leads to a fuller
interpretation of the teachings of the Master, and develops a reverent
spirit. The next step is the study of literature, the literature of the
spirit, in which nature is interpreted to us as speaking for the Father.
But neither teaching avails unless the teacher herself dwell " in the
secret place of the Most High." A friend tells me that one of her
earliest childhood memories is of being awakened by her mother be-
fore daybreak on a June morning. "Come, child," she said, — " come
with me over to the pines, to hear the thrushes sing." Across the dew-
wet meadows they went, in the early flush of morning, and the child,
her hand clasped in her mother's, listened with her to the exquisite
music of the thrush in the holy hour and place.
What need of words? It is. the Spirit that giveth Hfe. The flame
was kindled in the heart of the child because it burned undimmed in
the mother's heart. Not by preaching, nor even by much speaking,
will our teachers teach religion. But they will surely teach, whose lives
abide in the shadow of the Almighty. We cannot but speak the things
we have seen and heard. Striving to do His will in the schoolroom,
we slowly learn of the doctrine, and the truth we have made our own
we are enabled to share.
WHAT MORAL EQUIPMENT MAY THE COMMUNITY
REASONABLY DEMAND OF THE GRADUATES
OF THE COMMON SCHOOLS?
MR. WALTER H. SMALL, A.M.
SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND
The common schools are pubHc property; public or community
rights in these schools are inherent and incontestable. It is their right
to receive, for every dollar invested, a dollar's worth of return in the
mental and moral development of the boys and girls whom they edu-
cate.
The early New England school was founded on the Bible and the
catechism. Education was to be, "not only in good literature, but
sound doctrine." None could be instructors "that have manifested
themselves tmsound in the faith, or scandalous in their lives, and not
giving due satisfaction according to the rules of Christ." They must
be certified to by the minister of the town, in which the school was
located, and also by the ministers of the adjoining towns. In 1717
Connecticut schools became parish schools, and in New Hampshire
they were permissive. The reading-books were the Psalter, the Tes-
tament, and the Bible; the church dominated the school. Examina-
tion in the catechism in school on Saturday, examination in the Sun-
day sermon on Monday, not to mention the Monday school flogging
for the Sunday church misdemeanors, proves the close relation between
the two. It was not until after these dependent colonies became free
and independent states that it was thought necessary to incorporate
into the law any allusion to moral training. That law in this common-
wealth makes it the duty of all instructors, from the president of Har-
vard University to the teacher in the lowest school, " to exert their
best endeavors to impress on the minds of children and youth, com-
mitted to their care and instruction, the principles of piety and jus-
tice, and a sacred regard for truth; love of their country, humanity,
and universal benevolence; sobriety, industry, and frugality; chastity,
moderation, and temperance." Then they are to "endeavor to lead
their pupils as their ages and capacities will admit." The essence
of this law is to be foimd in other states.
The dissolution between church and school was reluctant. The cat-
echism did not fully disappear until about 1850. Since then there has
been a growing impression that moral education in the schools has
253
254 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
been decadent, and the question contained in the subject of this paper
has arisen periodically. In 1888, a committee of the Massachusetts
Teachers' Association made an extensive report on this subject, which
was hopefully optimistic, though not overconfident. Dr. Hall, in his
recent book on adolescence, says, "Although pedagogues make vast
claims for the moralizing effect of schooling, I cannot find a single
criminologist who is satisfied with the modern school." There are
all degrees of opinion between these two.
The subject naturally divides itself into three considerations: I.
The problem and its conditions; II. Means of treatment; and III.
Reasonable results.
I. The Problem. The problem of the elementary schools is to take
children from the entrance age of six years to the age of graduation,
fourteen or fifteen, and give them the foundations on which to build
during the next ten years. Habits do not become fixed during this
elemental period. They are the products of the years immediately
beyond. The closing years of the elementary school period form the
most dangerous in child-life. At that age there is greater tendency
to crimes and immoralities than at any other future period. This is
the age when dormant faculties spring into being, and primitive im-
pulses rage in the blood. School truancies largely occur between
eleven and fourteen. The elementary school must give such tenden-
cies and initial velocities as will carry them over and beyond the dan-
ger lines.
The problem of the elementary school is to sharpen the moral
vision to such an extent that the incorrigibihty of the two years im
mediately following graduation may be lessened; that the social vir-
tues may be recognized; that regularity, punctuality, obedience, rights
of others, bodily cleanliness, knowledge of physical self, truthfulness,
honesty, manliness, self-reliance, courtesy, — in fact, all that tend
toward correct habits and correct living may be implanted.
II. Means of Treatment. Moral teaching must be continuous. In
elementary school work it must be largely incidental, suggestive. At
this age didactic teaching is neither forceful nor fruitful. The school
atmosphere should be full of good influences. It should be an en-
vironment created with a distinct end in view. The tone must be
moral. The school building and its equipment has much to do with
this. The old-time schoolhouse invited the "jack-knife's carved ini-
tials." It equally invited the immoral expressions and pictures, lim-
nings of the grosser minds. They have not wholly disappeared to-day,
but they are less common because, of the better buildings and better
MORAL INFLUENCE OF THE COMMON SCHOOLS 255
surroundings. The best modern sanitary conditions have reduced to
the lowest terms the loss of modesty occasioned by the old-time pub-
lic exposure, and lessened the opportunity of vile lessons from vile
companions.
Next comes the opportunity from the curriculum. Scientists main-
tain that in the life of every child we have embodied all the changes
which nations have passed through from savagery to present intelli-
gence, and those things which have influenced national character will
influence individual character. Music, drawing, reading, give abun-
dant opportunities for this development. Good school music elevates
the taste, tints and tinges character.
For the sake of his future relations with other people, of his recog-
nition that the individual must be merged into the community, school
rules and their enforcement are necessary, that he may gain self-con-
trol, and be obedient to law voluntarily. The enforcement of these
rules has greatly changed in recent years. To-day, discipline is a
training of the will, the great mainspring of human progress. It is
teaching individual self-control; it is teaching recognition of individual
rights, as compared with the rights of the community, the school; it
is teaching obedience to those rights through force within, not with-
out; it is a doctrine of leadership. The spirit is trained, not broken,
until habits, the product of the will, are formed on right principles,
tend towards right growth, and ripen into wholesome manhood and
womanhood.
Buildings, equipment, studies, and rules are of little avail, unless
under the administration of a strong personality. There needs to be
in the schoolroom the spirit that rejoices over the one sinner that
repenteth. There needs to be the spirit of faith in the final result.
This is not found in the little soul. Teachers must be broad enough,
and strong enough, to imprint themselves on their pupils in a broad,
strong way. Here is the great responsibility of the community. They
should see that the teachers, to whom they intrust their children, are
men and women of clear eye, clear brain, clean blood and clean char-
acter, living examples of goodness, of truth, and of purity, but warm-
blooded, warm-hearted, virile, forceful. The danger to-day is that
this standard of the elementary school teacher will not be maintained.
Already, other interests are drawing them away from the schools, until
there is the possibility that they may fall into the hands of "young girls
and feeble men." When this comes true, the product will be young
and feeble, and the flow of the current is in that direction.
What right has any community to expect that a young woman,
256 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
getting a weekly wage of from $3.60 to $7.70 for the fifty-two weeks
of the year, shall be a mental guide, a spiritual adviser, and a moral
headlight, of strong compelling personal magnetism, a guide unto their
feet, and a light in the darkness? Yet, these figures represent the
extremes of over twenty communities, and there are hundreds like
them.
Every boy, from twelve years up, should come under the influence
of a vigorous, virile, whole-souled man, who has grown up through a
vigorous, tempestuous boyhood. He wants guidance, counsel, fellow-
ship, leadership. He has no use for sermonettes, or pleadings or tears.
The average woman teacher has trouble at this point, because she
does not understand the physical turmoil through which the boy is
passing, and because she is emotional, unjudicial in temperament, and
lacks the knowledge gained only through experience. The teachers
for this period of the elementary school life cost money, and this the
average community refuses to furnish.
Reasonable Demands. With these means, what reasonable demands
may the community make upon the elementary schools for the solution
of the problem? The right of expectation depends on two points —
knowledge of the physiological and psychological natures of the pu-
pils of common school age,^ and the condition of the community finances
in support of the schools. The community has the habit of looking
for finished products from the common school. The products are still
elemental, embryonic, formative. The belief in infant conversion and
in infant damnation, whether it be in religion or morals, has not wholly
disappeared from the land. It is this infant belief which still inclines
communities to expect too much from the elementary schools. The
community is inclined to judge everything from its own adult stand-
point; it is inclined to believe that its yardstick is the one which it
brought from the elementary school, when, in point of fact, it was
only then a foot-rule, which has grown into the yardstick with ma-
turer years. It is not a fair standard of measure for boys and girls.
The community has the right to demand of elementary schools, if
they are properly housed, properly equipped with good working tools,
and a strong teaching force, a fair solution of the problem, that pu-
pils shall graduate with a common moral standard, with a clear con-
ception of moral obligations, and with their tendencies in right direc-
tions. They have no right to demand that these pupils shall have
the fixity of purpose which develops in the secondary school age,
nor that all graduates shall have these conceptions and tendencies.
Not all are law-abiding, either in school or in the community. Neither
MORAL INFLUENCE OF THE COMMON SCHOOLS 257
have they any right to demand that these schools shall do the work
which belongs primarily to the home or church; nor have they any
right to demand that poor teachers and poor equipment shall pro-
duce complete results. They have the right to demand that the soil
shall be prepared, the seed planted, cared for, nourished, but if the
soil prove stony ground, if the tares spring up and choke in latei
years, they have no right to charge this as a fault of the elementary
schools. The elementary schools have none of the pleasures of the
harvesters. They may see the tendencies change, asperities soften,
irregularities grow toward regularities, but the full fruition is not theirs;
theirs is only the hope that the fruit may not bhght in the bud.
THE INDIRECT EDUCATION OF THE WILL
PROFESSOR HERMAN H. HORNE, Ph.D.
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE
By the direct education of the will, is usually meant teaching the
will how to act, teaching morality, instilling right ideas, giving ethical
instruction. By the indirect education of the will, I mean getting hold
of the moral nature through action, rather than through instruction.
Direct instruction must be present, but must be secondary to the con-
trol of conduct. The direct education of the will, through ethical
teaching, utilizes the sensory processes; the indirect education of the
will, through moral action, utilizes the motor processes. From the
beginning of education until now the sensory processes have been
overworked by teachers. When we recognize that the intellect is the
outgrowth of the sensory processes, and the will of the motor pro-
cesses, we are led to affirm the superiority of cultivating the will by
action to cultivating it by instruction.
Wliat, then, are the principles that should guide us in cultivating
the will through action ? To refer to a few of these in order: i. We
must utilize the inherited racial store of natural instincts and interests.
Man has all the instincts and interests of the lower animal, and some
of them, like constructiveness, imitation, and cleanliness, more highly
developed. In natural life these inborn instincts are overlaid by reason ;
in adolescent life they are beginning to be; in young life they control.
The moral problem 0} elementary education is the organization 0} these
manifold natural and inherited instincts and impulses.
How shall they be organized? Not by crushing them out — they
cannot be crushed out; nor by leaving them alone — they will run riot;
nor even by impressing ideas upon them as their governors —they
do not yet acknowledge the sovereignty of ideas; — but by directing
their expression toward legitimate objects.
Children will imitate? Then provide worthy models for their im-
itation. Children are naturally constructive? Then provide courses
in manual training and domestic science. Children will play? Then
provide ample recesses and good games, and recognize play as a legiti-
mate educator. Children are acquisitive? Then provide shelves for
natural-history specimens. Children obey the group-impulse? Then
let parents and teachers join in organizing proper bands and clubs.
Children are curious? Then provide legitimate difficulties to engage
258
THE INDIRECT EDUCATION OF THE WILL 259
their curiosity. Children instinctively fear? Make the consequences
of wrong-doing such as justly to excite their fear. Children so easily
fly into a passion ? When the fury is past, show the boy some wrong
inflicted upon the innocent, and let his anger kindle as a flame to
right it. Children are so secretive? Agree with them to keep all evil
reports about another. Children are so emulous of each other ? Con-
front each one with his own weak past self to excel. They are en-
vious of another's good fortune? Point to some man of good char-
acter as having the most enviable treasure. And so on through the
list. Catch the instinct in the act, and direct it toward a legitimate
object. To do so skillfully is actually to fashion tjie good will.
2. Aim at a specific right act, instead of at a general principle
of conduct. Save the deeds, and the habits will take care of themselves.
There may be a cripple in school, or one slightly deficient in some
sense-organ; there are sick persons in the neighborhood; secure some
particular child to share to-day the other's burden. The deed of kind-
ness done gives the child a new and finer feeling, itself a motive for
another deed. Not moralizing, but incidental moral practice, is our
better plan.
3. Let us form in the pupil's mind an indissoluble association
between pleasure and right-doing, and pain and wrong-doing. To
get pleasure and avoid pain is a part of our ancestral inheritance.
These are practically the only motives of animals. They are the
ruling motives of our children. In adolescent and mature life they
are supplemented by higher incentives, and sometimes really sup-
planted, as in doing right for right's sake and in self-sacrifice. The
progress to that high stage must be as rapid as possible through the
pleasure-pain epoch. Let no real school offense go unpunished. "Pain
is the rudder of education," said Aristotle. Let no faithful perform-
ance of duty go unrewarded. To enter into the joys of right-doing
is part of a moral order. For the joy that is set before them, our pu-
pils may come to endure the cross, despising the shame.
4. The great habit in organizing impulses, the saving virtue of
childhood, is obedience. It implies righteous authority somewhere,
and power to discipline. Obedience is the surrender of the whole
personality to righteous rule. Outward conformity is but the shell
of it. I do not say children must be taught the virtue of obedience,
but this; children must obey. To obey is not to submit; it is to let the
higher nature rule. The use of the child's interest does not mean to
permit him to do as he pleases, but that he should find his pleasure
in doing the right.
26o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
It will help us in forming this virtue to remember that directions
for young children should be definite, rather than general; uniform,
rather than inconsistent; and righteous, rather than questionable. The
ultimate basis is not our authority as teachers, but its righteousness.
5. Inspire a passion for right ideals. To do so, is to use the lever
of feeling in moving the will. These two — feeling and will — are so
closely related that many psychologists identify them. To love the
right supremely is a sure means of doing it. How shall such a pas-
sion be inspired? When it already animates the teacher's life; when
a genuine and personal interest is taken in the best welfare of each
pupil, when the school environment is made to suggest the beautiful;
when the positive, rather than the negative, values in life are empha-
sized, and when an humble and reverent attitude is always main-
tained, when the treatment is of great themes. It is not necessary
to preach the importance of virtue when we show forth a simple
natural, winsome life in the midst of imitative children. We truly
educate the will, not when we teach what were good to do, but when
we fill little selves full of ourselves, who are Christ's, who is God's.
TESTED METHODS OF INCULCATING RELIGION AND
MORALS
" Religionsunterright," and its Results
MR. EDWARD O. SISSON, B.Sc, A.B.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, CHAMPAIGN, ILLINOIS
Every school programme in Germany begins with Religion. Every
child must be instructed in religion. In general, it may be said that
the state provides three varieties, — Protestant, Catholic, and, usually,
Jewish. The parent may choose from these which he will, or he is
free to seek or provide other instruction, more in accordance with his
creed, provided he can satisfy the Department of Instruction as to
the quantity and quality of this instruction. In actual fact, the vast
majority profess one of the three prevailing faiths, and send their
children to the corresponding instruction. The religious instruction is,
in all cases, confessional; i.e., distinctively Protestant, Catholic, or
Jewish.
One must bear in mind that the school in Germany is formed and
governed by the state. The people, in general, have no voice in its
curriculum or methods. With respect to the religious instruction, the
real control is in the hands of the church authorities, who are, of course,
themselves state officials.
My remarks will be conlined to the Protestant, or in German
phrase, evangelical, instruction, and will refer, where nothing is said
to the contrary, to Prussia, for the reason that Prussia is the acknowl-
edged leader in educational as well as in other affairs. Further, by
the term " school," the public elementary school will be meant, unless
otherwise specified.
I. The Place of Religion in the Curriculum. For the first
three years of school life, from six to nine, religion has three hours a
week; for the other five years, four hours a week. This makes a total
of, roughly, 1,500 hours of instruction in religion in the elementary
school. Religion gets a little over 13 per cent of the whole school
time; only two subjects exceed it; the mother-tongue, including reading
and composition, has 24 per cent, and arithmetic a trifle over 15
per cent.
This long series of lessons, extending through the whole school
life, and having the same thorough and exacting character as other
Prussian instruction, must impress us with the largeness of the work,
261
262 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
affecting, as it does, every child of whatever birth or rank, and so
becoming the heritage of every adult Prussian.
II. The Subject-matter. The religious instruction includes four
main constituents: i. The Bible. 2. Luther's Shorter Catechism.
3. Hymns and prayers. 4. Church knowledge. In the higher schools,
the gymnasiums and realschulen, there is added a small amount of
doctrinal theology and Christian ethics.
1. Bible-study. The study of the Bible forms the backbone of
the instruction. In the early years, it consists of Bible stories from
Old and New Testaments, narrated freely by the teacher, and learned
by the pupils, so that they can recite them readily. When the pupils
can read, a book of selected stories, in words suited to their years, is
put into their hands. The stories are those which are commonly
taught in our Sunday schools. The list usually includes all varieties,
pedagogically considered, from "J^sus in the Temple" and "Abra-
ham's Unselfishness to Lot " to "The Sacrifice of Isaac" and "The
Slaying of the Prophets of Baal."
In the last four or five years, Bible-reading takes the place of the
Bible stories. Either the full Bible or an expurgated school Bible
is used. There is a sharp conflict of opinion concerning the two plans;
the teachers are, in general, strongly in favor of the school Bible, but
the ecclesiastical authorities block its introduction to a large extent,
insisting that the children must have the whole Bible in their hands,
and this, in spite of the well-known fact that the boys get together
and batten on the objectionable passages. The Bible-reading has the
aim of giving a connected idea of the Bible, as a whole, and, in par-
ticular, of the development of the plan of salvation — "History of Re-
demption," as it is called in the courses of study.
At this time there is a little so-called "Bible-lore," the names and
sequence of the books, a little Biblical geography, some points — very
conservative — concerning origin and authorship, and the like.
A good deal of the Bible is learned by heart; single verses, or "say-
ings," are learned and used, in a sense, as proof-texts for the cate-
chism. In Berlin, where the memory-work is at a minimum, they
learn fifty short passages, including about one hundred verses and
five Psalms (Ps. i, 23, 90, 121, 130). The Scripture, thus learned, is
called for constantly to illustrate and emphasize points of teaching.
2. Catechism. Luther's Shorter Catechism includes five parts: i.
The Ten Commandments. 2. The Apostles' Creed. 3. The Lord's
Prayer. 4. The Sacrament of Baptism. 5. The Sacrament of the
Lord's Supper.
TESTED METHODS OF INCULCATING MORALS 263
The first three parts are learned by heart, — Bible, Creed, Luther,
and all, — and what it means to know by heart, one can hardly imagine
until one has heard a Prussian boy recite his catechism. Of the fourth
and fifth parts, only the Biblical passages are usually learned by
heart. This makes the total amount of the catechism memorized
about eight pages. This is, as we shall see, only a small part of the
total memory-work of the religious instruction, and yet the present
requirement is far less than that of thirty years ago.
The place of the catechism in the school amounts to this: that a
work written chiefly for illiterate peasants of the sixteenth century
forms the text book of morals for boys and girls of all grades of cul-
ture in modern Germany. It is not surprising that the loudest com-
plaints against the religious instruction are directed against the cate-
chism. It is surprising that there seems, for the present, no hope of
its ejection.
3. Hymns and Prayers. The study of hymns extends over the
whole eight years. In the early years, single verses are learned; later,
whole hymns. Here, as in all German school-work, everything is ex-
plained and analyzed with great care before the pupil is required to
learn it, and the pupil must be able to explain and analyze it himself.
I trust that no one will think that I mean to imply that the children
really tmderstand all this religious material which is so patiently and
thoroughly explained to them.
In Berlin, a total of one hundred twenty-four verses are learned,
including fifteen whole hymns and some single stanzas. The favorite
authors are Paul Gerhardt and Luther. The hymns are mostly of
the type best described as pietistic. Two favorites, well known in
EngHsh translation, are Luther's " Eine feste Burg" and Gerhardt's
'■' O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden ! " "A Mighty Fortress is our God "
''tr. F. H. Hedge); "O Sacred Head now Wounded" (tr. J. W. Alex-
ander). It need hardly be added that the pupils learn to sing these
hymns as well as many others, and they sing them with inspiring power
and perfection. Some of the hymns are wonderfully fine, but
most contain a sentiment entirely foreign to the child's range of
ideas.
Prayers are learned in the first three or four years, and are used
in opening and closing school at all times. Nearly all the children
know two or three prayers when they first come to school, — a morning
prayer, a bedtime prayer, a "grace before meat," and a "grace after
meat." A few more are learned in school. All are extremely simple,
and, like the hymns, of a distinctly pietistic tone.
264 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
4. Church Knowledge. The material which I inchide under this
heading is as follows:
In the sixth year, instruction in the Church year, and the liturgy
of the Evangelical Church.
In the seventh year, the last religion lesson of each week is usually
given in part to an explanation of the Church lessons for the follow-
ing Sunday.
In the eighth year, a very brief and simple outline of Church his-
tory is given, treating mainly of Luther and the Reformation, with a
view to arming the good Protestant against the wiles of Catholicism,
but also including such topics as: The Persecutions, Constantine the
Great, Augustine, Contemporary Activities of the Church, and the like.
III. Spirit and Methods. Under this head I can touch only
lightly the general treatment and atmosphere of the religious instruction.
Some teachers treat the religion lesson in exactly the same way as they
would a lesson in geography or arithmetic, making it purely a matter of
so much knowledge; others give it the air almost of a prayer-meeting.
Between these extremes there are all intermediate varieties. The intel-
lectual tone is prevalent in the higher schools in general, and in Prus-
sia in particular. In the great majority of these schools the religion
lesson has no more emotion than any other lesson, and of no other
kind.
The intellectual treatment is by no means confined to the higher
schools, nor to Prussia. It is common, also, in the Volksschulen,
especially among the younger teachers. There is much reason to be-
lieve that it is on the increase. I met the devotional method in Prus-
sia only among the older teachers and some women teachers. The
current of public feeling and the new scientific thought that is gain-
ing so rapidly among the common school teachers are against it, and
seem likely to drive it out in the end.
On the other hand, much as we may disapprove the purely intel-
lectual treatment, there is a devotional type which is hardly less ob-
jectionable,— a sort of prayer-meeting tone and phraseology, which are
quite out of place in school, and with children of school age.
This brings us to the vital point of the German and all other re-
ligious instruction — that is, the teacher himself. Whenever I have heard
good reports from a German youth about his Religionsunterricht, it
has always been with some such words as "We had a fine teacher in
this or that class, and I enjoyed religion, and got good from it." There
are two fatal faults in the teacher of religion, indifference and insin-
cerity, and two vital necessities, love and wise candor. The Prussian
TESTED METHODS OF INCULCATING MORALS 265
system, unfortunately, makes these two virtues difficult; the stringent
methods and discipline discourage affection between teacher and pupil,
and the rigid orthodoxy required in the religious instruction destroys
candor by compelling the teacher to present as sacredly true, state-
ments and ideas which his conscience and judgment reject.
IV. Results. What is the actual outcome of this great religious
instruction? Without some sort of answer to this question, we can-
not make any final estimate of its value or significance, nor any
inferences as to our own problem. The Germans themselves are far
from agreed on the point. Some think the religious instruction is
the source of great and almost unmixed benefit; others condemn it,
root and branch. And while its bitterest enemies may be the enemies
of rehgion, there are not wanting earnest churchmen who declare that
it works untold injury to all true piety. There is an oft-quoted
saying of an eminent theologian, that the German people must have
much religion in their hearts, inasmuch as the Religionsunterricht has
not yet rooted it all out! It would not be far wrong to summarize
German opinion thus : Instruction in religion is absolutely indispens-
able, but the existing instruction is completely out of harmony with
the best thought of the day and stands in need of radical re-
form.
I venture the following as to results: The pupils certainly get
a large stock of knowledge on religious matters, of the Bible, of the
great conceptions of Christian doctrine, and of the Evangelical Church.
How much this is worth, and how long it is retained, are questions
not easily answered.
It seems quite undeniable that the religious instruction does not
produce devotion to the Church, either in the sense of interest in
its work, or of adherence to its tenets. The growing estrangement
from the Church, especially among the laboring classes and the cul-
tured, is one of the most conspicuous features of German life. In-
deed, it is hard to avoid the conviction, held by many Germans, that
the religious instruction, with its rigid inculcation of a body of ideas
antagonistic to current thought, is one of the potent factors of this
estrangement.
It is conservative to say that there is no good proof that the
religious instruction is any more effective in creating inward religion
and morality than in producing devotion to the visible church. That
in the hands of earnest and high-souled teachers, the religious in-
struction can be and is the means of deep and lasting moral and
spiritual good, no one can doubt.
266 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
In conclusion, a word as to the inferences for our problem. I sug-
gest five:
1. The great fact of the instruction itself, and the almost unani-
mous opinion among German schoolmen, that religious instruction is
an indispensable part of the school, ought to incline us to weigh our
own situation, and ask whether we are not robbing our school of an
essential organ.
2. There is no hope that we can borrow either wholesale or in
detail from the Prussian system, without searching criticism.
3. Any hope of sustaining, by means of religious instruction, any
cult or dogma in opposition to the best thought of the day, is an
illusion. Knowledge of religious concepts and doctrines may be in-
culcated, but this by no means insures any particle of genuine re-
ligion.
4. Here, as there, the person must be found; the man or woman
with warm heart and clear head. His moral teaching must be in-
structive and persuasive, never dictatorial nor dogmatic; he must work
most by being, as a wise man has said, the imitable thing, in morals
and rehgion.
5. Lastly, a word as to the Bible. The wisest German thinkers
on education see in the greater prominence of the Bible the salvation
of the Religionsunterricht, and are urging with much success that
all other matter be made subordinate to it. The exclusion of the
Bible from our schools is a staggering fact, when viewed in the light
of a great system of public schools with the Bible. In some of the
smaller German states and in Switzerland, the Bible is in the schools,
and the teacher's conscience is free. If Prussia would learn from this
example, her religious instruction might gain new power and stability.
And who can estimate the uplift that could come to us from the pres-
ence of the Bible in the school ? But only with the spirit of freedom.
A few of the most available books on the subject are :
Russell, James E. German Higher Schools, pp. 213-226. New York, 1899.
Seeley, L. German School System. New York, 1896.
Bolton, F. E. Secondary School System of Germany. New York, 1900.
Klemm, L. R. European Schools. New York, 1889.
ORIENTAL CUSTOMS WITH RESPECT TO THE INCULCA-
TION OF RELIGION AND MORALITY
I. In China
HON. CHESTER HOLCOMBE
FORMERLY SECRETARY OF LEGATION AND ACTING MINISTER, PEKIN, CHINA
Chinese and American systems of education do not have a common
purpose. The Oriental teacher does not seek to convey information
to his pupil. Hence he needs not the text-books which give the latest
discoveries, the most recent researches, the most modern methods, form-
ulae, and devices in all the wide range of knowledge. Intellectual de-
velopment even is not the main object of Chinese study. In point of
fact, aside from learning to read and write, the cultivation of the memory,
the art of versification, style in composition, in which the Chinese sur-
pass the entire Western World, there is nothing in common between the
American and Chinese ideas or methods of education. In the Chinese
schools no mathematics and no sciences, however rudimentary, are
taught, nor any language, aside from the national tongue. Such stray bits
of history and geography, often inaccurate, as are found in the various
text-books are there quite incidentally, and only because they serve to
illustrate or enforce some other point, deemed of far higher importance
to the student. The answer to the question which forms the subject
of this paper, What are the Chinese Customs of Inculcating MoraHty ?
can be given in a single line. The entire system and course of Chinese
education is devoted to instruction in civic and social ethics. The govern-
mental examinations are shaped exclusively to that end. Not to com-
municate knowledge or learning, but to mold character; not to make
men smart, but good; to instil right principles of action and conduct;
to teach each his relations and duties to his fellow, — is the primary and
final purpose of the school in China. Hence revised editions of modem
text-books are hardly needed. A careful study of the ethical system
taught will show that it is sound, pure, and good.
It is necessary now to examine very briefly the character of the
moral instruction, and in doing so, the accuracy of the assertion just
made will be evident.
The first book, or primer, invariably used in Chinese schools is called
the San Sz Ching, or Trimetrical Classic. It was prepared by a teacher
in A. D, 1050, for use in his school, and may be bought in any village
in the empire for about two cents. It is in poetry, or doggerel, and
267
268 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
contains 1068 words. It has been translated into Latin, French, Ger-
man, Russian, Portuguese, and Enghsh, and a paraphrase of it is used
by the Protestant, Roman, and Greek Catholic missionaries, in their
schools in China. Carefully translated quotations will best show its
character. The first few lines run as follows:
" Men at their birth, are by nature radically good. Though alike
in this, in practice they widely diverge.
" If not educated the natural character degenerates.
" A course of education, is made valuable by close attention.
" To nurture, and not educate, is a father's error. "
Near the center of the little volume is found a summary of moral
duties which must be given here.
" Mutual affection of father and son; concord of man and wife.
" The elder brothers, kindness; the younger ones, respect.
" Order between seniors and juniors; friendship among associates.
" On the part of the prince, regard; on that of his minister, true
loyalty,
" These ten moral duties are ever binding among men."
This ancient text-book has been committed to memory by countless
millions of Chinese children.
Other text -books in the preliminary course of study resemble closely
the San Sz Ching, though having a wider range. The productions of
nature, virtues of the early rulers, the power and capacities of man, his
social duties and mode of conduct, with many and minute instruction
in the proper manner of life, — all are concisely dealt with, and illustrated
with examples. Quotations from two only will be given. " Observe
and imitate the conduct of the virtuous, and command your thoughts
that you may be wise. Your virtue once established, your reputation
will be formed; your habits once rectified, your example will be good.
A cubit of jade stone is not to be valued, but an inch of time you should
contend for." Another volume, called the Hsiao Ching, or Classic of
Filial Piety, has had an immense and lasting influence upon the Chinese
race. The last of the primary books treats of the principles of education ;
the duties we owe our rulers, kindred, and fellow-men; those which
we owe to ourselves in regard to study, demeanor, food, and dress;
and gives many examples from the earliest times down to two and
one half centuries before Christ, of the observance of the lessons taught
in the book, and the good effects which have resulted therefrom.
Following upon the primary course comes the academic, the body
of Chinese education. And now we reach the most conspicuous figure
in the history and affairs of the empire, the sage and statesman,
THE INCULCATION OF RELIGION AND MORALITY 269
Confucius. He represents, he was the embodiment, of a force which,
more than other, probably more than all others combined, has shaped the
institutions of China, controlled the policy of the government, deter-
mined the character and destiny of the race. For more than two thou-
sand years he has been final authority in all matters, public and private,
to a nation which to-day numbers more than four hundred millions. Let
any one interested in the problem determine the aggregate population
of China in that long stretch of time, and he will see to what an enormous
mass of humanity Confucius has been leader, guide, and master. Nor
is there any sufficient indication of the decadence of his authority. He
is still the moving and steadying spirit which dominates the Chinese race.
The academic department of the educational course consists of nine
books. These are called among the Chinese the Wu Ching Sz Shu, or
Five Classics, and Four Books, and are commonly known to the Western
World as the Confucius Classics. The system of instruction is identical
with that pursued in the primary course. Each character or word must
be thoroughly memorized, — there are at least half a million of them, —
and each student must learn to read and write them, and to expound
their meaning, which naturally includes the ability to prepare essays
upon any passages found in them. This work completed, and the test-
ing examinations passed to the satisfaction of the government, his stu-
dent days are ended. He is the educated and polished gentleman,
fit for the highest service and honor within the gift of the Son of Heaven.
Such, for many centuries, has been the scholastic itinerary of Chinese
youth, and they have labored through its clouds, and fogs, and mazes,
up towards the glittering stars which have crowned their ambition.
Confucius was not the founder or teacher of any religious system.
He personally and emphatically repudiated any such idea. He was
the author, or as he himself would have said, the compiler of a sys-
tem of political and social ethics, or code of morals. His one ambition
was to be chosen by some prince who would follow his instructions in
the management of public affairs. He was disappointed in this, and
hence to the end regarded his life as a failure. It is manifestly im-
possible to give anything which approaches even a cursory review of
the teachings of the Confucian ethical system. Fortunately, this is
not necessary. There are three characters, or words, which occur so
frequently in the teachings of this great master, upon which he laid so
much of significance and stress that, taken together, they make plain
the foundation and frame-work of the entire fabric. Understand them
as he understood them, and you will know Confucianism as the mas-
ter knew it.
270 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
The first and most important of these words is "li.^' It may be
termed the bedrock upon which rests the entire system of social and
civic morality, as taught by the Chinese sage. It is constantly in the
mouth of every Chinaman to-day, as it has been for many centuries,
as the final criterion and authority discriminating between right and
wrong. It is commonly mistranslated, and out of this has grown a
sweeping condemnation of the entire system. It has been inferred that,
with Confucius, everything depended upon form, that if the external
appearance and conduct were decorous and correct, it mattered not
what the internal conditions might be. Nothing could be further from
the fact. This Chinese character means far more than ceremony or
ritual. Probably the nearest equivalent phrase to "li" in our tongue
is " The principle of correct living." It is the primary and ultimate
law of right action, and implies doing the right thing at the right time,
in the right way, and from the right motive. No moral training, based
upon this word and enforcing the constant practice of it, can be far
wrong.
The second clue-word to the Confucian ethical system was given
by the master in conversation. Being asked if there was any one word
which would serve as a rule of action in all the relations of life, he replied,
"Is not 'shu' such a word?" Then, fortunately, he added an ex-
planation to his meaning by giving this interpretation of the Golden
Rule, " What you do not wish that others should do unto you, do
not unto them." This Chinese character has also been dwarfed in ordi-
nary translations into " reciprocity," or " give and take." It includes
immensely more than that, and means consideration, charity, forbear-
ance, thoughtfulness for others, and mutuality of rights and interests.
A third word which played a conspicuous part in the Confucian conver-
sations, and which, correctly interpreted, will furnish an important key
to his meaning, is " Chun Tz.'' Here again Sinologues have been much
at loss for a proper translation . They have called it the " princely man , "
the "superior man," the " mean" (or moderate) man, and by a variety
of other phrases. It is quite evident from many descriptive remarks
that by " Chun Tz" the Sage meant the ideal man, the perfected type
of manhood. And while hunting far afield, and finding only a misfit
phrase, these translations have overlooked one close at home, which
fully conveys the idea of the master. The " gentleman," in the highest,
truest, broadest meaning and practice of that word, is the modern type
of the Confucian " Chun Tz."
The teachings of Confucius were elevated and pure, free from word
or idea which might possibly corrupt the thoughts of men. He gave
THE INCULCATION OF RELIGION AND MORALITY 271
the most minute and varied instructions for the nurture and education
of children, laid the utmost stress upon filial duty, and prescribed de-
tailed rules of courtesy and conduct for the government of all ranks
and classes. The principal figure in all of his instructions was the
" Chun Tz,'' or gentleman, and no higher type may be produced by
any code or system of ethical teaching. Dignity, moderation, self-re-
straint, fortitude, and sincerity were to be his characteristics, and the
Golden Rule the law of his intercourse with his fellows. It is reasonable
to believe that such moral training, if faithfully pursued and enforced,
will carry humanity as high in the scale of being as it can be lifted,
without an appeal to those other and higher ties of his spiritual nature,
which connect each man directly with God.
II. In India
REV, ROBERT A. HUME, D.D.
PRESIDENT AHMEDNAGAR THEOLOGICAL SEMINARy, AHMEDNAGAR, INDIA
Of the two hundred and ninety-four millions of India and Burma
reported in the government census of 1901, sixty-two millions were Mo-
hammedans. The masses of them are iUiterate, and receive compara-
tively little instruction in religion or morals, save that every social ar-
rangement of Islam teaches that God is one; that idolatry is offensive
to him; that Mohammed is the great prophet of God; that the Koran
is the sacred book; and that certain requirements about circumcision,
fasting, and the observance of certain seasons must be carefully regarded.
Among the higher and educated sections of Mohammedans, well-to-do
families receive a good deal of careful training through religious teachers.
Strict Mohammedans are careful to send their children only to schools
where the Koran is taught. Strict Mohammedan women are careful
to compel the members of their households to follow ceremonial re-
quirements of their faith.
This paper will mainly describe the customs of inculcating religion
and morals among the two hundred and seven millions who were re-
turned in the census as Hindoos. The majority of these are largely
uneducated as to books, yet some instruction about conduct and religion
is given among them. If the word " moral " in our subject were meant
to be a synonym of highly ethical, or as giving principles of right and
wrong, then the statement must be made that there is very little such
instruction among any class of Hindoos. In no religious community
of a primitive or moderately developed character is morality, as such,
much taught or emphasized. The principal matter in all such religions
is ceremonial purity and correctness.
2 72 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Imitation of elders is the principal way of inculcating religion and
morals in India. In hundreds of thousands of villages there is only
one person who is supposed to be a religious guide and responsible for
explaining and enjoining religious ideas and customs upon the people
of the village. And the main thing which that holy man does is to
perform with considerable exactness what are deemed religious practices,
and to see that the idols and shrines are properly looked after. Hence,
imitation of the religious customs of caste and community is the principal
way in which the middle castes, who are mainly farmers and artisans,
know anything of rehgion. There is a large number of days in the
year which are specifically set apart for the observance of certain reli-
gious events. These dates are given in the calendar and are usually con-
nected with easily remembered astronomical occurrences. On the feast
days the community as a whole, especially the women, follow certain
traditional practices about bathing and feasting and fasting, and large
numbers go to the shrines and temples. In connection with such small
religious gatherings at sacred shrines there is often some person, who
has a group of singers associated with him, who reads or sings or tells
some stories from the religious books. Many people sit and hear these
recitations by the hour. Also, on moonlight evenings there are often
such recitations from sacred books. The masses get most of their knowl-
edge of religious ideas and stories from such occasions. And when people
go in crowds on great pilgrimages, then each night, as the company stops
en route, and after reaching the place of pilgrimage, they listen to men
who read or sing or tell the substance of the epics or Puranas and other
books. At those great gatherings there are persons whose profession
it is to direct the pilgrims what to do ceremonially, and to perform on
them those rites which are supposed to be efficacious, and the efficacy
of which depends mainly on the correctness with which everything is
performed. But the pilgrims come away with injured morals, due to
the extortions or immoralities which abound at all so-called sacred
places.
Using the word " morals " as the recognition and doing of things
which are a considerable part of daily life, and which affect the character
and welfare of men, the first important point to mention is that the
inculcation of good habits for the life of the masses of Hindoos depends
mainly on the women. The duty and practice of industry is instilled
from early childhood into the very bone and fiber of thought and life by
the habits of the community and the home, and by the compulsions of
difficulty in making an existence. In connection with industry, the
simple habits of the farmer's household require regularity of life. The
THE INCULCATION OF RELIGION AND MORALITY 273
minuteness and comprehensive character of caste requirements make
obedience to elders and society an easy and common virtue. The
division of the community into strata, each of which has its recognized
grade, promotes regard for social order and reverence toward acknowl-
edged superiors. Under purely Oriental civilization, criticism of the
social order is useless and uncommon, and duty is taught to be quietly
filling one's appointed station in life. Modesty is an ornament to the
average Hindoo woman, and is developed by the social law which al-
lows young and middle-aged women to have little intercourse even with
the men of their own households. Economy is carefully and systemati-
cally taught, because from very early childhood all girls, and to some
extent Httle boys, are associated with the women who manage the house-
hold affairs. There is careful estimating the exact amount of grain
and of all condiments required for every meal and for every expenditure.
Exactness of thought and speech, and care in making and keeping prom-
ises, are not cultivated or highly appreciated. Exuberant imagination
causes exuberance of speech, which often seems to Occidentals flagrant
disregard of truth. But, barring testimony in litigation, the average
man in India does not intentionally deceive, nor is he deemed untruth-
ful by those who know what his language means.
Turning now to the small but influential section of the Indian people
who are Brahmans, and members of a few other of the higher castes,
one finds that much pains are taken in inculcating religion and ceremonial
morality in that community. Here, especially, reUgion and morality
are synonymous, and they cover every detail of life. It may surprise
many to know that here, too, the inculcation of religion and moraUty is
mainly done by women, so far as this does not depend upon books.
The united family, in which three or four generations live together and
share all responsibilities and privileges, is the typical family life in
India. See a picture of the home life of such a family. From earliest
years children see that parents and grandparents and all the members
of the household are scrupulous about what are esteemed religious duties.
Even in cold weather every one carefully bathes more than once a day.
Many rise before dawn and go to bathe in streams. When the women
cook, they carefully change their garments. Even little children, unless
ceremonially clean, are not allowed to go near or touch the cooks. When-
ever the men eat food, they bathe carefully and change their dress.
After every meal the floor is cleaned in the regulation way. The me-
tallic dishes are scoured and placed in order. Careful restrictions are
placed on the sources from which water is brought. When the boys
play or go to school, they are scrupulous about not having their persons
2 74 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
or garments touched, even accidentally, by any one who is not cere-
monially clean. Great conscientiousness is developed as to fasting and
feasting and the observance of sacred occasions. When sickness and
death enter the household , additional responsibilities are incurred . Obe-
dience is a virtue which is inculcated and developed by the assumptions
and atmosphere of the home and of society. As girls grow older, they
are largely confined to assigned quarters of the united family, and are
not expected to speak with the males except under restrictions. Modesty
is effectively taught. From very early days girls are taught industry by
being required to do as much as they can in the various lines of domestic
economy. Thus the average Brahman woman becomes a good cook
and a good housekeeper, and has careful training for her position in life.
All girls and little boys go daily with their mothers to the shrines for
the performance of certain religious rites. At home they share in the
care of the tulasi plant and in serving the idols in the home. When
the family priest visits the home, the women and girls sometimes attend
and notice the rites which the priest performs. It is pre-eminently Hin-
doo women who inculcate the Hindoo religion by repeating religious
stories which they have heard, and by requiring all female members of
the household and the younger boys to perform religious ceremonies
and to observe sacred seasons in the prescribed manner.
The fathers of the higher castes do something in the training of their
sons in religion and morals. Boys associate with their fathers, and thus
learn to imitate the various religious acts of men. Usually, between
the ages of six and eight, boys of the higher castes go through a service
of initiation, and are invested with a sacred cord, after which they are
taught to read sacred books and are permitted to read and learn
about various religious doctrines. From this time on many boys go to
schools, in which they are taught a good deal about religion and conduct.
In households where special care is practised, even little boys are awa-
kened before davm and set to reading sacred books. They usually read
these aloud. Sometimes the tufts of their hair are tied by .strings to a
nail or hook in the wall to keep sleepy heads from nodding. Purely
indigenous customs among Brahmans required a boy soon after being
initiated to leave home and to go and live with a religious teacher for a
period of years. This practice is comparatively rare nowadays. To
some extent in the village schools and in higher institutions, the Hindoo
religion and Hindoo morality are taught to boys. A Hindoo college
has been organized at Benares, under the leadership of Mrs. Annie
Besant, to teach Hindooism much on the lines of higher institutions in
Christian countries. Were the characteristic institutions of learning
THE INCULCATION OF RELIGION AND MORALITY 275
in India succeeding in teaching the Hindoo religion to the rising gene-
ration, this new effort would not have been attempted.
The strong points in Indian customs of inculcating rehgion and
morals are, that obedience, reverence, and conscientiousness are taught
in all sections of the community by leading the individual from child-
hood to do those things which are required by his religion; that the
arrangement of society helps boys and girls from early childhood to
form their conduct according to the requirements of the spheres in which
they are to Uve; that with very limited resources in books and schools
a considerable degree of success is attained in securing that which is
thus aimed at. These are points in which the more intelligent people
of the West might well learn something from the customs of India. In
no community will adequate success be attained in religion or morals
where parents and elders depend mainly on teaching through books
or even oral instruction, without, first, themselves practising, at home
and in all relations of society, that which their theory of religion and
morals requires; and secondly, in continuously and absolutely requiring
all the members of the household from early childhood to conform their
conduct to the teaching which they profess to accept. •" i
IX. TEACHER-TRAINING
THE TRAINING OF SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS
The Sunday School Teacher-training Accomplished by the
Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy
DEAN EDWARD HOOKER KNIGHT
HARTFORD SCHOOL OF RELIGIOUS PEDAGOGY, HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
What is the Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy attempting in
the training of Sunday school teachers ? Put in one sentence, the ans-
wer would be, It is seeking to give a thorough preparation for the teach-
ing ministry. In the position of the religious teacher, it recognizes a
sacred office, no less sacred and no less important than that of the
ordained ministry itself. To those who would enter upon the duties
of this office it seeks to give a training which shall be adequate in its
thoroughness of preparation for the duties involved. For twenty years
it has been striving to fulfill this mission. During this time the work
has constantly been enlarging in its scope, but has not changed in its
fundamental principles. The work which is now being attempted
is, therefore, the fruit of a long experience. To explain this work it
is necessary to state principles as well as plans and methods.
The first thing to be determined by religious educators is the su-
preme end they have in view. This the Hartford School of Religious
Pedagogy finds in the development of the well-rounded personality,
of 'which the most important element is Christian character. Not
what the boys and girls know, nor what they can do, but what they
become, is the one all-important question.
Sunday schools exist in order to help all, both young and old, to
become more like Jesus Christ.
By the side of this educational principle, the Hartford School of
Religious Pedagogy would place another, that the chief means by which
this supreme end is to be reached is, again, personality, or Christian
character. Like begets like. Certainly, the most essential qualifi-
cation of the Christian teacher is Christian character. He must be
saying by his life, Come, let us journey toward the goal together.
Tributary to this dominant power are many means which the Chris-
tian teacher may use both for the development of his own personality
and in his work for others. Among these are four fields of distinctive
value. These four the Hartford school is seeking to develop in their
276
THE TRAINING OF SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 277
relations to the great problem of giving a thorough training to the
teaching ministry. They are the Bible, as the incomparable text-
book in rehgion and morals; Psychology, which shows us what the
human being is and how he develops; the Home, as providing the
chief environment in which the child develops and as being the most
important element in the Hfe of society; and Pedagogy, which, both
as a science and as an art, seeks to make the best use possible of all
this material for the development of the child in his full personality.
Sufficient progress has already been made in all these fields, so that
material of great helpfulness is available even to the humblest teacher;
so much land yet remains to be possessed as to demand the most lavish
use of time and strength on the part of many in exploring the un-
known fields. This school stands for the wise use of assured results,
and for that patient and thorough investigation which will yield even
greater results m the future. It beUeves, also, that there should be
three distinguishing characteristics of study here, whether it be by the
average teacher or by the most expert specialists. The study of the
Bible, or of Psychology, or of the Home, or of Pedagogy, should be
spiritual, scientific, and practical; spiritual, in that it should be under-
taken in dependence upon divine guidance through the Holy Spirit,
should have chief regard to the great essential truths in the field con-
cerned, and should have its primary effect upon the student in growth
of character; scientific, in that it should be conducted according to
well-estabUshed principles and methods of investigation; and practical,
in that it should pursue those subjects which are of the highest
importance and of the greatest benefit to those concerned.
In all of these fields this institution would direct the attention of
the reUgious teacher to the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth, which,
besides furnishmg a perfect model of what religious education desires
to accomphsh, also presents the best illustration of the chief means
which it must employ. In the attitude of Jesus toward the Old Testa-
ment, his study of it, and use of the results of his study, is the model
for the Christian teacher in his use of the Bible; in that home at Naza-
reth, humble as it was, were the essential elements of the ideal home;
what human nature is, both in childhood and maturity, and what it
may become, we learn best from Jesus' study of human nature, and
from what he was, as child and man; how to teach, one may certainly
best learn from companionship with the Master Teacher. As Jesus
is supreme in personality, so is he supreme in those fields which bring
the most important contributions that may anywhere be found for the
development of the personality.
All that has thus far been said has appHcation to all workers in
2 78 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
the field of religious education. But for the same reason all has most
emphatic application to those who would be leaders in this field. The
training of such leaders is the most distinctive feature in what the
Hartford School is doing for the training of Sunday school teachers.
The rank and file of the army of Sunday school workers will receive
their training and their inspiration largely from the various leaders
with whom they come in contact. The churches are calling more and
more loudly for young men and women of high ability and thorough
professional training, who shall enter this field of the Sunday school
as a life-work. The demand is far greater than the supply. There
is also a growing feeling on the part of churches that ministers them-
selves should be thoroughly equipped along these lines of religious
education. To meet both these needs the Hartford School offers an
advanced course which is open only to college graduates, which gives
three years of professional training, and which leads to the degree of
Bachelor of Religious Pedagogy. By its own courses of study and by
its afl&liation with the Hartford Theological Seminary it covers ail
branches of the preparation necessary for successful professional leader-
ship in this field. A training like this must be had by many if the
church is to make even a beginning in meeting the opportunities open
to it in religious education.
There are other fields which require leaders, but where so extended
a course of educational preparation is not necessary. This school
therefore, offers also a three years' course, which is open to graduates of
high schools and normal schools, and which aims to prepare both young
men and women for the many salaried positions in the lay work of the
church, where teaching is a distinctive but not the sole feature. Such
are to be leaders in their respective positions, though not in so large
fields as the preceding.
In order also to meet directly something of its obligation toward the
great body of Sunday school workers, this institution offers a one year's
course for volunteer church workers to which any one may be ad-
mitted who is recommended by pastor or superintendent.
These various courses constitute a fully graded system, which has
in view both the average Sunday school teacher, who wishes light and
guidance, but who has little opportunity for special study, and also the
young man or young woman, with an extended general educational
preparation already, who wishes to obtain the highest and best special
equipment possible. To meet the needs of both these classes, and
of all between, — nothing less than this is what the Hartford School of
Religious Pedagogy is striving to accomplish in the training of Sun-
day school teachers.
THE TRAINING OF SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 279
The Sunday School Teacher-Training Accomplished by the
Institute and Training School of Young Men's Christian
Associations
JOHN W. HANSEL
PRESIDENT OF THE INSTITUTE AND TRAINING SCHOOL OF YOUNG MEN'S
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
It is the purpose of this paper to repoft on some of the ways in
which the Young Men's Christian Associations and the Association
Training Schools through the Associations, are contributing toward the
training of lay Bible teachers.
The Institute and Training School is not a school for the training
of Sunday school teachers. Its contribution to teacher-training is,
therefore, an indirect one — a sort of by-product, as it were.
The purpose of the Association Training School is the enlistment
and training of men for the general secretaryship and the physical and
other directorships of the Young Men's Christian Associations.
The general secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association
is not primarily a teacher, but an organizer and director of forces in a
world-wide Christian movement. The aim of the movement is. the
salvation and fourfold development of young men. The training of
the secretary proceeds upon the principle that physical, intellectual,
social, and moral instruction must be co-ordinated with spiritual develop-
ment in the building of the symmetrical man.
One of the most important and effective of the association activities
to-day is its Bible-study department. There has been a phenomenal
growth in this department of association effort during the past decade.
One hundred and thirty-two associations report an increase over last
year of 448 classes, enrolling 6,312 students; an increase per associa-
tion of more than three classes and nearly 50 students. More than
60 associations have organized teacher-training classes. One asso-
ciation conducts a class for teacher-training, with an enrollment of 40
men from as many churches. Each member of the class conducts a
class for teacher-training in his respective church. Another associa-
tion has two similar classes and is furnishing quite a number of
teachers for the churches. Yet another, with an enrollment of more
than 1,300 men in Bible classes, states that 25 to 30 per cent of the
students are teaching in the Sunday schools, shops, and homes of the city.
The training school and the associations, through their summer
schools for college students and for volunteer workers in city, town, and
railroad associations, have done valuable work in the promotion of
Bible-study and in training Bible teachers. The association has been
28o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
one of the leading factors in the promotion of Bible-study among the
students in our institutions of higher learning during the past twenty
years. The association Bible classes in the universities and colleges
are taught by students, who are in this way receiving valuable training
as teachers. Many of these young men continue to teach the Bible in
the home and in the Sunday school after they have entered professional
or business life.
One of the primary aims of the Institute and Training School is to
fit its students for the organization and conduct of Bible-study depart-
ments in the associations. In planning the courses of study in the
Bible-study department, while the subject of teacher-training has been
given an important place in the thought of the faculty, the controlling
consideration has been how to make the largest possible contribution
toward the development of the character and faith of the secretary.
In its Bible-study the school deals entirely with the English Bible,
It seeks to give the student, first of all, a mastery of the facts of the
text; to make him acquainted with the history of God's dealings with
men through the generations, and especially his revelation to man
through Jesus Christ. The curricula, as at present planned, offer
to men looking forward to managerial positions in the association the
following Bible-work. (AV of this work is inductive, us'ng as largely as
possible the Bible itself as a text.) First, a course of 20 hours in Bibli-
cal introduction; second, a course of 60 hours in the Gospels — the
life and teachings of Jesus; third, a course of 30 hours in history and
literature of the early church, with an additional 10 hours in the teach-
ings of the apostles; fourth, a course of 60 hours in Old Testament
history and literature; fifth, a course of 20 hours in personal religious
work. It is the aim of this course to give the student a clear knowledge
of the essentials of the Christian faith, and to inspire and direct him
in religious work for individuals; sixth, a course of 30 hours in induc-
tive book studies. In addition to these courses in Bible -study, there
is a course of 20 hours in Biblical pedagogy; a course of 60 hours in
church history; a course of psychology and a course in sociology, each
of which makes valuable contributions toward the fitting of the teacher.
The training school course, as a whole, equips the student for effi-
cient service as a normal teacher and coach to lay Bible teachers and
leaders in Christian work.
THE TRAINING OF SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 281
The Sunday School Teacher-Training Accomplished by the
Alberta Sunday School Association
CHARLES HERBERT HUESTIS, M.A.
PASTOR MC DOUG ALL METHODIST CHURCH; EDMONTON, PRESIDENT ALBERTA
SUNDAY SCHOOL ASSOCIATION
The problem of religious education and its relation to education in
general, the problem of the child and his nature, the problem of the
subject-matter of teaching and its application to the needs of the child,
and the problem of the teacher's own personality, seem to be the main
things to be taken into consideration in the training of teachers. When,
however, we looked abroad for something that might serve us as a model,
we were able to find no course of study that seemed to be sufl&ciently
broad and pedagogical to meet our needs. The following scheme was
therefore formulated:
Ten courses of study are offered :
I. Introduction to the Bible.
II. Child Study and Teaching
III. Old Testament History. (Half course.)
IV. Old Testament Literature. (Half course.)
V. The Prophets of Israel.
VI. The Life of Christ.
VII. The Founding of the Christian Church. (Half course.)
VIII. Modem Missions. (Half course.)
IX. Paul's Life and Letters.
X. Educational Method.
XI. Primary and Junior Course.
XII. Sunday School Methods. — Superintendent's Course.
Students who desire to proceed to a diploma must take three of the
above courses of study. Courses I and II are required, and form the
major of every graduate course. Courses III to XII are elective,
any one of which may be selected. The selected course shall be known
as the student's minor. There are four books in each course, and as
the study is supposed to extend over the space of two years, this means
that six books are to be read each year. Of course the student may
finish the reading as rapidly as he please, but it is advised that at least
two years be spent in the reading. There are no regular examinations;
that is to say, no papers are set. But the student is required to give
two proofs of his knowledge of the nature of the subjects, and his abihty
to teach:
I. A review of from one to three thousand words, according to the
nature of the subject, upon each book read.
282 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
2. On completing the full course of reading, a trial at teaching
before a committee.
The educational department of Alberta Sunday School Association,
in adopting this plan of teacher-training, believes that it marks a distinct
advance upon Sunday school normal courses. It is, we believe, the
first serious attempt on the part of an association to provide Sunday
school virorkers with a curriculum of study upon truly modern lines, that
they can take up at their own homes, and which will make them, in so
far as reading can do so, competent teachers of the Bible to children.
The following items of excellence may be noted:
It is comprehensive. The required courses cover the whole ground,
while the electives enable the student to specialize on some subject of
particular interest and importance.
It is thorough and scholarly. Nothing short of mastery of the books
so that the student can express their content in his own words will be
accepted. It does not even remotely suggest that any kind of outline
course of child study and the Bible will do for teachers in the Sunday
school, when the most vigorous application is necessary to qualify
teachers in the public school.
It is stimulating. While none of the books are destructive in their
nature, all are in sympathy with the historical study of the Bible and the
genetic study of the child. The text-books are the best that can be
obtained at a price not too great for the average teacher, and have been
selected after consultation with leading Bible teachers and education-
alists in the country.
It is fair. No course is too hard for the average person of, say,
eighteen years, while every course is strong enough to make desultory
study unsatisfactory. On the completion of his graduate course, the
student will have a knowledge of the Bible and the principles of educa-
tion superior to most of his fellows, and a sense of fitness that will be an
inspiration.
THE EDUCATION REQUIRED FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL
TEACHERS
The Sunday School Teacher-Training Accomplished by the
Sunday School Union of the Methodist
Episcopal Church
JESSE LYMAN HURLBUT, D.D.
SUNDAY SCHOOL UNION OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
It was not until after the Civil War that the movement for the training
of teachers began to assume importance. A public school principal in
Buffalo, Mr. J. E. Gilbert, established in 1865 a monthly paper con-
taining lessons for the training of Sunday school teachers. About the
same time. Dr. John H. Vincent began holding normal classes in Chi-
cago; and in the year 1866 he was called from Chicago to New York, to
take part in the supervision of the Sunday school work of his own
church, and in 1868 he was made secretary of the Sunday School
Union. He at once formed a normal committee, and planned courses
of study for Sunday school teachers, in the Bible and in the work of
teaching. Under his direction, institutes and conventions were held
in many places, classes of teachers were established, and a regular
course of lessons was instituted, and the first Chautauqua assembly
was held in 1874, under the auspices and direction of the Sunday Schoo'
Union of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
The Chautauqua normal course has been recognized from the be-
ginning as the regular course for the training of teachers under the di-
rection of the Methodist Episcopal Church, although the assembly
soon became interdenominational and independent from the office of
the Sunday School Union in New York. Circulars of information are
sent, written examinations are given, and diplomas are conferred,
while at the same time the same course is carried on from the Chau-
tauqua office. The number of those who study the courses directly
under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church is not now as
great as it was, for the reason that the teacher-training has of late years
been taken up by the various state Sunday school associations, with
all their complete machinery for organization and local supervision.
The aggregate circulation of the books prepared for the Chautauqua
normal courses has averaged nearly fifteen thousand every year for
at least fifteen years past.
The plan of this course of study is a simple one: To select only the
283
284 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
most important subjects, those that are essential to a knowledge of the
Bible and the work of teaching; to prepare studies upon them that
can be mastered without great difficulty, with outlines which may be
placed upon the blackboard, and thereby appeal to the eye, and to
arrange them in such a form as not to require a specialist or a scholar
to teach them, for in the necessities of the work the instructors as
well as the students in these classes must be " laymen " in every sense
of the word. Only two books are assigned to each year; the first to be
studied with examination if one is desired; the other to be read.
J. T. McFARLAND, D.D.
SECRETARY OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL UNION OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
As showing the present attempts and plans of the Sunday School
Union in directing teacher-training, the following things may be noted:
1. A secretary for the Sunday School Union is appointed in each
annual conference, representing it in all of its interests and particularly
with a view to fostering Sunday school institutes and other meetings
directed to teacher-training.
2. A bureau of special correspondence has been established in
the home office, with a special superintendent in charge (Dr. O. S.
Baketel), through which the union keeps in communication with the
conference secretaries as well as with the pastors and superintendents.
3. The secretary of the Sunday School Union is issuing a booklet
for the presiding elders and one also for pastors, in which he gives a
list of the most valuable books belonging to the literature of teacher-
training, particularly recommending nine books regarded as being of
prime importance. The entire list embraces seventy-five books, and
is intended to constitute a teachers' library. A strong effort is being
made to introduce this library into the Sunday schools as a basis for
any thoroughgoing work in the line of teacher-training.
4. In these same booklets is given an extensive list of topics re-
lating to the Sunday school, adapted to use in making up programmes
for Sunday school institutes and conventions, references being made,
in connection with the topics, to the books of the above-named teachers'
library.
5. Following these, a carefully prepared series of round table
programmes will be issued, prepared distinctively for use in teachers'
meetings of the local Sunday schools, such as the pastor or superin-
tendent may use with the teachers of his school. These, also, will have
references to the teachers' library, making it easy to find the best
material on the subjects to be discussed. These programs will be
EDUCATION FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 285
numbered and systematically arranged, beginning at the beginning of
Simday school discussion and carrying the teachers over the whole
scope of Sunday school problems. It is felt that if this series of studies
is pursued in the Sunday school it will secure excellent educational
results.
6. Beyond this an extensive course of advanced Bible study is to
be gotten out. Agreement has now been reached with the representa-
tives of the Methodist Episcopal Church South and the Methodist
Church of Canada to unite with the Methodist Episcopal Church in
this matter. The course will cover three years, including the study of
nine text-books and two or three hand-books of reference. One book
will be taken each quarter, omitting the summer quarter. The books
will be written by the ablest writers who can be secured in the world,
without any reference to their denominational connections, and are
intended to represent the assured results of the best scholarship of our
time. But they will be written with reference to the average laity of
the churches. It is intended that this course shall round out the train-
ing of teachers by giving them a more thorough knowledge of the Bible,
and also that it shall open the way for all adults in the churches to study
the Bible in a more connected and systematic way than the current
weekly lessons make possible.
The Nature and Extent of the Pedagogical Training Neces-
sary FOR Sunday School Teachers
PROFESSOR J. R. STREET, Ph.D.
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY, SYRACUSE, NEW YORK
The immediate problem which rehgious education must set itself is
the correction of the conditions and exigencies that have curtailed its
life and rendered unsatisfactory its efforts. The immediate lines along
which reform must proceeed are : The creation of a more healthy educa-
tional sentiment in the church itself, so that it may foster in every way
possible the instructional as well as the propagandic nature of the
school; the development of a curriculum or course of study which will
be in harmony with educational principles and practices, and which
will more adequately meet the demands of the religious nature of the
learner, and satisfy the needs of the growing soul; and third, the develop-
ment of a body of trained workers, who will ever move in harmony with
the best principles of educational philosophy. Assuming, then, that the
Sabbath school exists for the purpose of discipline as well as evangeliza-
tion, I shall try to set forth, without lengthy discussion, some of the
286 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
things that may and ought to be done along the hne of the third of these
possible reforms, viz, a more adequate preparation of the teacher.
First, the teacher is not an independent unit of society. He must work
in connection with the other social factors, and his problem is to correct
the deficiencies of these other educational forces. The two factors with
which the teacher of the Bible school must co-operate are the home and
the church. He is not a substitute for either, but a co-partner. The
three must labor for the same end, or confusion and failure may follow.
There are three things that the teacher must know:
First, he must know the Bible or subject of instruction. No man
can teach all that he knows, try he ever so hard. Therefore he must
know more thoroughly than he can teach. He must know so thoroughly
that he must teach. It implies that type of knowledge that awakens
the instinctive impulse to tell; that gives birth to the spirit that made St,
Paul cry, "Woe is me if I preach not." The teacher's tools are his
knowledge, and if these be dull, how can he hope to do efficient work ?
So the professional training of the teacher must give him this com-
prehensive and soul-inspiring information and lead to know and ap-
preciate all subject-matter that has direct bearing upon character-pro-
duction.
The second thing that the teacher must know is the child, the learner.
By this is not meant a speaking acquaintance, but a comprehension of
human nature and its laws of development. Since the days of Comenius,
pedagogy has declared that the child mind shall form the point of depart-
ure. Is there, then, in the religious world a new law entering, whose
presence excuses the teacher from studying the nature of the growing
boy or girl ? Our function is to Hft the child to a higher level of life.
How can we possibly do so without a knowledge of the needs of the
individual child? and how can we determine these needs without a
knowledge of the mental and moral content of the child's mind?
The teacher must understand the physical basis of character and the
relations existing between mind and body. In the past, we have been
disposed to largely neglect the body. It has certainly not been con-
sidered the handmaiden of character. To-day, however, we know
that character is conditioned upon the way in which we have trained our
nervous system to respond to stimuli from without, and to express the
higher and nobler dictates of conscience and reason. One may go even
further, and declare that our whole emotional life receives its coloring
from the body. Temperaments are corporeal rather than mental.
Moods are the direct product of physical activities and conditions,
while our conduct as an individual and the virtues and vices of life are
EDUCATION FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 287
contingent upon the relations that obtain between these two sides of our
being. The hygiene of the nervous system conditions moral hygiene.
Without a fair conception of the relation of mind and body, one cannot
appreciate the conduct of another or become a positive agent in the
production of right physical reactions. The mind is constantly exercis-
ing dominion over the body, driving it to all sorts of activity, transform-
ing sensations, producing delusions and hallucinations, forcing the
special senses to do its bidding, goading the muscles and paralyzing
inhibition. Ideo-motor is the plan of human life, and this will explain
the restlessness of youth, and the violent outbreaks that come like an
avalanche upon a boy or girl. The body, on the other hand, makes
mental life possible, or destroys it. Through fatigue, or disease, degen-
eration, or pathological conditions, it limits or largely obhterates mental
action. Only as these facts are known and appreciated can the teacher
put himself into sympathetic relations with others.
Again, the teacher should be familiar with the laws of mental hfe,
such as attention, apperception, memory, association of ideas, imagina-
tion, interest, will, etc., in order that he may employ these laws in the
furtherance of the child's growth. If the mind has a natural way of
behaving itself, of getting at truth, then it is very patent that the teacher
wall do his best work by putting himself into harmony with mind and
operating with, not against, psychic laws. It does not lie within the
province of this paper to work out all these facts in detail. It seems
sufficient to state that the teacher who does not understand the nature
of attention, its kinds, and their pedagogic significance, the agencies that
tend to secure it, likewise those that destroy, or render it impossible, is
very likely to do the things that are antagonistic to the end he desires to
accomplish.
Perhaps a word should be spoken in regard to will. We have been
so accustomed to think of it as a distinct metaphysical entity, that
we find it hard to realize that it is a confederacy built up in the indi-
vidual life out of the instincts and the instinct feehngs, emotions, and
desires, and the ideas and ideals of life. The new pyschology has
thrown a flood of light upon this complex hierarchy of our being, and I
know of no other study in the whole realm of mind that will do so
much to put the teacher into a helpful attitude as an intelligent grasp of
will, its origin, nature, diseases, and relation to character. I do not see
how any one can do the child adequate and intelligent service with-
out such knowledge, for it is the express duty of the parent and
teacher to help the child to get a will.
Again, the teacher should understand the nature and the function
288 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
and the scope of reflex action, and its tremendous importance to life and
character. So, also, habit and its laws, how to render permanent reac-
tions that are desirable, or to transform or eliminate undesirable ones.
There should also be some comprehension of the instincts and instinct
feelings, and how out of them are developed all the virtues that are pure
and divine, or the vices that are base and devilish.
Further, the teacher must know the stages of growth, and the laws of
their unfoldment, in order to bring the right material at the right time
and in the right way, or to properly aid the child to pass from stage to
stage, without burdening himself with psychic rudiments, or atrophying
in any of the stages. We know to-day that the child is not a miniature
man, but rather one potentially, and the specific function of the educator
is not so much instruction as facilitated growth. How can one accom-
plish this if he does not understand these developmental periods and
appreciate their significance ? or how can he bring the proper material of
instruction at the right time, or how sympathize with the growing boy
or girl in the midst of idiosyncrasies?
Again, sympathy with childhood and a comprehension of child
nature is absolutely needful in order to produce the highest type of man-
hood and womanhood, so the teacher should be familiar with the results
of the child-study movement, and be able to interpret the individual
child in the light of such facts.
The instructor should have some knowledge of pathological defects
and the laws of mental and moral hygiene, the relation of degeneracy to
vice and crime, and the play of heredity and of environment in deter-
mining future character. In a word, the nature that he proposes to
guide in its developmental experience should be thoroughly known.
Knowledge of the Bible and knowledge of the child are not enough.
These two must be brought together. The laws of teaching form the
link. One must, therefore, familiarize himself with the philosophy of
education, in order to reap the results of the experience of the race, and
not spend needless years in discovering facts that he might have had as
a rich legacy from"the past. A study of the great teachers is desirable,
and will be found helpful. Especially is this true of Pestalozzi, Froebel,
Herbart,and Christ. One can afford to give considerable time to the
pedagogy of Christ, for his practices incorporate all that is best in method.
Teaching is more an art than a science, hence the practical side must
not be neglected. Study of this will involve familiarity with the prin-
ciples that underlie method, discipline, organization, and management,
development of courses of study, story-telling, and illustrating, and
methods of preparing and presenting the lesson, and class management.
EDUCATION FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 289
You will see that teaching is no mean art. What could be higher than
that of helping in the harmonious development of a human being ? And
having assumed the office, shall one not pay the price of success ?
The Character and Scope of the Biblical Knowledge to be
Expected of Sunday School Teachers
PROFESSOR WILLIAM G. BALLANTINE, D.D., LL.D.
INTERNATIONAL YOtWG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION TRAINING SCHOOL,
SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
Taking it for granted that the Sunday schools of the future will
uUimately be graded as completely as day-schools are, and that the
teachers will vary in the scope and character of their Biblical knowledge
as in everything else, we reach the question whether there are some
general conceptions of the Bible and the way to use it which all teachers
should have in common.
I believe that the time has come when the entire body of Sunday
school teachers of our continent should know and should lay at the
basis of their teaching those fundamental conceptions of the Bible
which the prodigious efforts of devout scholarship during the last half-
century have estabhshed. Never in the history of mankind has so
much prayer, so much devout reflection, so much industry, so vast,
prolonged, and minute examination of particulars, and so much mental
acumen been concentrated upon a single subject. The work is still
in progress and must go on for an indefinite time to come, like that in
all realms of knowledge. But this is no reason why the results so far
as already fully assured should not be generally and unequivocally
accepted. Progress in Biblical knowledge, like progress always, has
been partly destructive and partly constructive. The fact that it has
been at all destructive is sometimes brought up as a very serious in-
dictment. But a little thought will, however, show the necessity of the
law. The Ptolemaic system had to be destroyed in order to give place
to the Copemican. The discovery that Columbus had not discovered
India destroyed his cherished theory in order to give to the world a
new hemisphere. We have nothing to lose by the destruction of any
mistaken notion, however vital it may have seemed to our religion;
for the truth of God must certainly be better, larger, and more help-
ful in all our relations both to the earth and to the heavens. If dis-
aster is to be avoided, the entire body of Sunday school teachers must
be speedily initiated into those general conceptions which distinguish
the new Biblical scholarship from the old. Dread of an illiterate min-
istry was one of the powerful motives of our Puritan forefathers. By
ago THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
that term, " illiterate ministry," they, meant unscholarly guidance in
religious thought.
The Bible is literature, to be interpreted and used as literature,
according to the general laws of grammar, rhetoric, and psychology
that apply to other books. It is no occult cabala with mystic mean-
ings. It is not a rebus to be guessed. If I felt justified in making
any specific recommendations to-day, I should propose that every
Sunday school teacher should be required to have a reasonable acquaint-
ance with the works of Professor Richard G. Moulton, who has done
so much to popularize the knowledge of the Bible as literature.
The main modern conceptions of the Bible are so simple and com-
prehensible that they can be learned from a brief course of lectures
such as every Sunday school teacher can find time to attend. And
who can so appropriately give such a course at the teachers' meetings
as the pastor of the church? Where, for any reason, the pastor pre-
fers not to undertake it, it will generally be easy to secure some col-
lege or seminary professor who will gladly serve. The course should
be very simple and non-technical. It should not be expressed in the
jargon of the professional workshop. It should deal only with large
ideas.
Correct general ideas regarding the Bible are essential in those who
are to form the religious thinking of the young. But is the main hope
of the Sunday schools of the future in more accurate knowledge of
Biblical minutiae on the part of the teachers? I greatly doubt it.
Not in more intense study of the details of the book, but in broader
and more thoughtful study of the subject of which the book treats,
lies our hope. From the Old Testament we learn of the religious life
of the ancient Jews, and from the New Testament we learn the life
of Jesus and the founding of the Christian Church.
One of the dangers of the lesson-help system is that the simple and
practical truths of a Scripture passage may be buried under an ava-
lanche of erudition. Oriental customs, the disclosures of buried cities,
the zoology, botany, philology, and what not of all Biblical lands, are
thrust in masses upon us. Perhaps the most serious danger now of
Bible study is pedantry. If Assyria happens to be mentioned, Sargon
and all of the other kings with longer and less pronounceable names
must be passed in review. The parable of the good Samaritan may
be the lesson. Then the word down in the statement, " A certain man
was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho," is seized upon. The
extraordinary topography of the Holy Land is described. The fact
that Jericho lies in a great cleft in the surface of the earth much be-
EDUCATION FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 291
low the level of the sea. and that the surface of the Dead Sea is 1,292
feet lower than that of the Mediterranean, are made clear by relief-
nniaps and cross-sections. Then the treatment of wounds with oil and
wine may be enlarged upon, and the theories of therapeutics prevalent
at the Christian era. Then the incident of taking out twopence, or
shillings, or denarii offers a peg whereon to hang an excursus upon
Hebrew and Roman money, and the value of the precious metals in
different ages. This sort of thing is not wholly to be condemned.
A certain amovmt of it may make clearer some details of the picture.
But its usefulness has often been vastly overestimated. I should say,
curtail this kind of Bible study and save time for study in which the
children shall be familiarized with the various kinds of good Samaritan
work going on at present in their own city and throughout the world.
And the teacher of this second class will not need to know how far
down Jericho is below Jerusalem or what was the value of a denarius.
But it is time for all Sunday school teachers to know that the mi-
nute verbal study of the Bible, even in a sober way, is unprofitable.
The comparative study even of the four gospels in the original shows
how far the evangelists were from accuracy in detail. Now, when these
unstudied and often inexact phrases of the Greek renderings of Ara-
maic traditions come to be rendered into English according to that
curious psychology of translators which is itself a realm of sacred mys-
tery, it is vain indeed to put the microscope upon words. Lists of the
" whosoevers " of Scripture and the " in no wise's " of Scripture are
wholly delusive. Our translators put in whosoever at their own ca-
price, according to no discoverable system. In no wise is inserted
even more at random. And these are but specimens. The study of
the history of the English versions, now happily stimulated by the
generosity of Miss Helen Gould, must remove at least a part of this
illusion regarding mere words. It is unfortunate that any part of the
Sunday school hour should be spent in comparing the old version with
the new, or in interpreting the archaic words of the English of three
hundred years ago (which we will strangely regard as the only proper
dialect of religion) into modern speech. It is a pity to have to stop
to tell a scholar that in religion prevent means to help, and that to let
means to hinder.
Thank God, religious thinkers have escaped from subjection to
the lexicographers and the grammarians. Many weary years have I
spent upon Greek and Hebrew, thinking that in the etymologies of
these languages I could know the exact mind of God, only to find that
the Bible was not written by college professors and that the writers
292 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
with their Oriental rhetoric, never dreamed of the mechanical accuracy
and the verbal niceties we have attributed to them. Jesus spoke
generally in hyperboles, or in parables or metaphors, so that his teach-
ings are for the most part clear out of the realm of the grammar and
lexicon. The words do not pretend to formulate his thought; they
only suggest it. Let us turn from that world of fanciful constructions
with which we have so often deluded ourselves in solemn trifling over
words, and study God's truth writ large in characters, in nature, and
in the march of events.
X. CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS
ANNUAL SURVEY OF THE PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS
EDUCATION IN THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN
ASSOCIATIONS AND YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN
ASSOCIATIONS. 1904
WALTER M. WOOD
SUPERINTENDENT OF EDUCATION, THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION
OF CHICAGO
Religious education was recognized and increasingly used as a means
of personal safeguard and character-building in the Young Men's and
Young Women's Christian Associations of North America during the
year 1904.
The organizations included within the range of this survey are the
Young Men's Christian Associations of North America, with their 1,815
associations and 373,000 members; the Young Women's Christian
Associations, affiliated under the general supervision of the American
Committee, with their 733 associations and about 80,000 members,
and the Women's and Young Women's Christian Associations under
the general supervision of the International Board, with their 53 asso-
ciations and reported regular membership approximating 20,000.
The key-notes of progress in the Young Men's Christian Associations
and the Young Women's Associations under the American Committee
have been extension beyond the associations proper, strengthened Bible-
study, and the training of leaders.
In the Young Women's Christian Associations under the International
Board the keynote of progress has been the intensification and internal
organization of personal Christian effort.
Extension Work. Unquestionably, the most significant development
of the year 1904 was that in the line of extension of association religious
activities, not alone beyond the associations' buildings to other natural
centres of congregation, but far beyond the range of association mem-
bership; whereas, previously, for some years the major portion of the
association religious work has been conducted in the association build-
ings. Last year witnessed the extension in larger measure than ever
before of Bible classes into shops, schools, homes, on shipboard, in
theaters, churches, by correspondence to men in the railway service, to
boarding-houses, fraternities, offices, and even to outing and vacation
293
294 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
camps. Religious meetings have also been inaugiu-ated in larger measure
in shops, and theaters, and the associations have taken a leading part
in the conduct of evangelistic meetings in city evangelistic campaigns.
Bible Study and Meetings. The " forward movement " in Bible-study
in the Young Men's Christian Association has made the year 1904 most
conspicuous in the increase of the number of associations aggressively
promoting systematic Bible-study and in the number of students enrolled.
There has been a growing appreciation that the most feasible and
effective unit of religious effort is the Bible class, because of its great
flexibiUty, permitting of adaptation to any class of people under any
conditions; because of its equally valuable service in evangelization, and
in strengthening the Christian life of believers; and because of its em-
phasis upon personal participation of each in the co-operative work of
a limited group.
The experience of the past year reveals a growing sentiment favor-
able to more moderate-sized and less spectacular Sunday meetings in
the association buildings, regularly held, with evangelistic results care-
fully followed up.
Boys. As a natural sequence to the growing recognition of the period
of adolescence as the one affording the largest opportunity for religious
development, there has been a rapid increase in the amount of religious
work among boys. True to sound pedagogical principles, this work
has been done apart from the religious work for men, with a striking
increase in the use of boys as the religious leaders of boys. Marked
progress has been made in the free adaptation of forms and methods
of Bible instruction and in the settings for religious teaching, to put them
in harmony with the natural characteristics and interests of the youth.
There has been less of imitation of the forms of men's classes and meet-
ings, and the introduction of unconventional forms that make the dis-
cussion of religious topics and the enforcement of religious principles,
as applied to character-building, a natural feature in the life of a boy.
Life Problems. Beside direct religious teaching in conventional forms
of religious service, strong emphasis has recently been placed upon the
discussion of practical life problems, generally from a Christian stand-
point, but without special reference being made to this fact. Some of
the former Bible class and club groups in both the Young Men's and
Young Women's Christian Associations have given this turn to their
studies and discussions, seeking thereby to work out the simple and per-
sonal problems of applied Christianity. In large measure, the value
of the noon and midnight shop-talks, conducted on a rapidly increasing
scale in both the Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associa-
SURVEY OF PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 295
tions, consists in the translation of fundamental Christian truths into
working formulas for the every-day human life.
Social and Club Forms. The year 1904, more than any previous
year, has proven in Christian associations that social contact is the
vehicle of personal religious influence. In the movement, therefore,
away from large classes to smaller groups, taking a club form of or-
ganization, and to a certain extent from large mass meetings to smaller
meetings, there is an indication of real progress. More and more, es-
pecially during the past year, groups for Bible-study, or the conduct of
other reUgious features, have taken on, instead of the class or committee
form, a club form of organization, with special emphasis upon the
increase of personal fellowship and co-operation among the members
of the group. In addition to the club form of organization, strong
emphasis has been laid upon social gatherings and informal teas in
conjunction with Bible classes and religious meetings.
Training of Teachers and Leaders. Partly in explanation of the
advances of Bible-study and other forms of religious work, and partly
as a necessity resulting from the extension movement, a most important
element of last year's progress is found in the great increase of attention
given to the training of Bible teachers and leaders in Christian work.
Supervision. A conspicuous advance has been made, especially in
the Young Men's Christian Associations, and the Young Women's
Christian Associations under the American Committee, in the delegat-
ing of trained specialists to the task of discovering religious opportuni-
ties, defining religious problems, suggesting methods of religious work,
and personally coaching local leaders for efficient service.
Reasons for Progress. In brief resume, it is interesting to note espe-
cially those things which have contributed most largely to recent progress.
Eight distinct reasons may be given for the growth of last year:
1. There has been, on the part of all Christian associations, a con-
siderable broadening of their field of operation, having reached, especially
in matters of rehgious instruction and influence, far beyond their build-
ings and beyond the membership or usual past constituency of the asso-
ciation. The association buildings have thus become radiatmg centers
of Christian influence, and the organizations themselves have developed
a projective power, enabling them to enter upon an era of service to the
large constituency of young men and women of the entire community.
2. There has been a larger investment of money than in previous
years. In the City and Raihroad Young Men's Christian Association
alone, in the local promotion of religious effort, there was expended in
1904, $141,000 as against $127,000 in 1903.
296 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
3. There has been a larger and better organized working force.
Throughout the country, in both men's and women's associations there
was reported a large gain in effective organization and definite assump-
tion of responsibilities by workers.
4. More reliable helps and suggestions have been available to
those having religious work in charge than in any previous year. The
excellent graded courses provided largely by the International
Committee, the increasing volume of literature, defining experiences and
valuable methods, the stimulus of the international Bible-study exami-
nations; the Bible-study courses and articles on religious work in such
publications as " Association Men " and " The Evangel," together with
the increasing correspondence and personal counsel of state and inter-
national officers, have all contributed much to inspire and guide asso-
ciation workers in their religious effort.
5. More systematic and aggressive promotion has been given the
Bible-study and other religious work than at any previous time. This
has been supplied through the local association committeemen and
executives, who have felt that the most important present duty is the
establishment of a more thorough and far-reaching religious work, and
through the effort of state and international specialists, who have gath-
ered and distributed most valuable information, have visited large
numbers of associations, counseling in the inauguration and guidance
of their work, and have conducted large numbers of institutes for the
special training of local leaders of religious effort.
6. The past year has shown among association workers a growing
spirit of willingness to be unconventional, if the amount or value of
their services might thereby be increased. As Mr. See of Brooklyn
has said, " A characteristic feature of the year has been the work done
at unconventional times and in unconventional places." The freeing
of association workers from the shackles of traditional conventionalities
in forms and methods of religious work explains much of recent progress
and brings large promise of increasing future power.
7. There has been increasing emphasis on all phases of association
work as influencing toward the Christian life. The present conception
of religious education is not restricted to include only those activities
which bear directly upon the spiritual life; but, true to the model estab-
lished in the development of Christ himself, — " And Jesus increased
in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man," — it has to
do with all that constitutes the normal Hfe of a human being dominated
by the Christian spirit. The various Christian associations, therefore,
while at this period of their development laying special stress upon the
SURVEY OF PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 297
magnifying of direct religious agencies affecting the spiritual life, ex-
pressed, both in statement and in the activities they conducted, their
continued and growing belief in the essential religious value of the phys-
ical, educational, social, and economic means employed.
8. There has been a greater fullness of the Spirit and a new vision.
A great religious awakening, such as found expression in the Christian
associations last year, does not have its origin in men or methods, but
in the Spirit of the Living God incarnate in those who seek to know His
will and to do it. In the successes of last year many had a vision of the
great unoccupied field, and have felt the inspiring thrill of the power that
is sufficient for all things.
Conclusion. For the Christian associations of North America, in
the year 1904, to have claimed by occupation a wider field; to have in-
creased religious vitality by the cultivation of greater bibhcal intelligence;
to have established the habit of " striking while the iron is hot " in the
youth of the individual; to have practicalized spiritual truth by its
larger application to the solution of current life problems; to have put
religious activity on a social and fraternal, rather than a monastic and
patriarchal, basis; to have trained and set to the task of Christian
leadership an army of lay workers; and to have increased in amount
and efficiency the forces making for organization and promotion^; — is
to have made real progress — progress that is substantial, inspiring,
and prophetic of a greater work, under God, in the days to come.
BIBLE-STUDY IN THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN
ASSOCIATIONS
MRS. J. S. GRIFFITH
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
1. The Adaptability of Bible-Study to All Departments of Associa-
tion Work. I. To Women in Universities and Colleges. The Amer-
ican Committee has for several years recommended to the student asso-
ciations the same courses which are used in the Young Men's Christian
Associations. These courses are known as the Student Cycle. They
have been prepared primarily for college students and are arranged
for daily work. Fifteen to thirty minutes each day are required for
personal preparation. The cycle includes: Studies in the Life of Christ;
studies in Old Testament (bourses; studies in the Acts and Epistles;
studies in the Teachings of Jesus and His Apostles.
There are now 535 institutions of learning affihated with the Amer-
ican Committee, representing nearly 40,000 students, who are members
of the Young Women^s Christian Association. Last year 10,567 were
registered in association Bible classes.
2. To Business Women. We realize that adapting Bible-study
to business women necessitates suiting courses to all grades of intellectual
abihty, to many phases of society, with great inconvenience in meeting,
and with much indifference on the part of many. With these diffi-
culties in mind, it will be understood why associations have introduced
so many methods and have recognized the necessity of having more
short-term courses in the city association than in student work. In
carefully reviewing the reports that have been received recently, it is ap-
parent that many of the courses recommended by the International Com-
mittee of the Young Men's Christian Associations for city work are being
used. These include : The Life and Works of Jesus according to St. Mark ;
studies in the Life of Jesus; studies in the Life of Paul; Christ among
Men; inductive studies of the Gospel of John. In addition to these,
various short courses that have been taught at summer conferences
are used, besides many outlines prepared by the local teachers. Much
remains to be done in systematizing the Bible work in cities, and prac-
tical plans for more thorough national supervision are now in operation.
In several city associations there are more than 200 persons registered
in the Bible classes. It has been necessary, in many cases, to introduce
various means that will bring out the principles and teachings of the
BIBLE-STUDY IN THE Y. W. C. A. 299
Bible without having it take the form of a Bible class. Chapel talks
are given when all the pupils who desire to do so meet for a ten minutes'
service before the opening of the evening classes.
Drop-in classes are becoming quite popular at the noon hour, and
enable the teacher to give a simple, practical Bible lesson with helpful
thoughts for every-day Uving. Life problem talks are often given and
heartily received in factories, when it would be impossible to bring a
direct evangelistic appeal. Several associations are using the leaflet
which has been prepared by Miss Helen Miller Gould for the purpose
of forming circles for the memorizing of Scripture. Series of Bible
lectures by eminent Bible teachers have been largely attended in several
cities and have resulted in real awakening in the interest of Bible-
study.
3 To Women in their Homes. The Bible work that is most
popular and effective among the third group of women are the board
Bible classes and the neighborhood classes. The association is an
interdenominational movement, so the board members and committee
workers are representative women from the different churches. There-
fore, when a board of directors becomes interested in their own as-
sociation Bible classes it not only deepens their own spiritual life and
makes them more effective board members, but it prepares them for
better service in their own churches.
Neighborhood Bible classes have unlimited possibilities, and are in-
creasing rapidly. If some highly respected woman opens her home
one morning a week, invites her friends, and secures a good teacher,
there is little difiSculty about the class being sustained.
II. The Agencies Employed in the Development of Bible -study.
1. The Summer Conferences. The American Committee conducts
ten days' conference for Bible study, for the consideration of approved
methods in association work, and for the development of the spiritual
life. At each of these gatherings, from two to five Bible classes are
taught. Many young women have received their first impetus to
Bible-study at these conferences, and numerous classes have been formed
all over the country as a result of the enthusiasm shown by the delegates
upon their return.
2. The Director of Religious Work. It has been only recently
that one person has been asked to give exclusively her time to the or-
ganizing and strengthening of Bible classes, gospel meetings, personal
workers, and groups, and to study the means by which the young
women caring only for the classes to which they belong may be brought
into touch with the directly spiritual part of the work. Five cities
300 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
employ such women, and several others are planning to add a director of
religious work to their staff next autumn.
3. National Supervision. It must be apparent to all that a great
deal of Bible work is being done when there are 10,567 enrolled in
student Bible classes, 306 separate Bible classes in the city associations,
and 19 classes to be taught at the summer conferences of 1905. Yet in
a very real sense this is a year of beginnings, as the National Bible-study
Department is being organized, and past experience proves that rapid
strides are made as soon as the National Committee can give the proper
amount of supervision and can provide the right workers.
III. The Principles Underlying Successful Association Bible Work.
The importance of adequate courses of Bible -study is fully appreciated.
Numerous interviews are being held with well-known Bible teachers
on the subject, so that the courses now in print and of real value may
be utilized. The Bible -study Department will serve as an index finger
pointing classes to the courses best adapted to their use, and it will
not assume to meet the varied needs through the preparation of entirely
new courses.
The importance of competent instruction is recognized also. Horace
Mann says, " The problem is not the founding of the school, but the
finding of the schoolmaster." In student Bible work those in the
classes should study in such a way as to prepare themselves to teach
others. If the 10,000 yoimg women now enrolled in student classes
had this thought thoroughly instilled, and should study throughout the
college course with this aim in mind, it would do much in solving the
problem of finding Sunday school teachers, leaders of our young people's
meetings, and Bible teachers for our city association Bible classes.
MRS. CHARLES N. JUDSON
PRESIDENT YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION, BROOKLYN NEW YORK
In all the associations connected with the International Board —
and they are located in all of our larger cities from the Atlantic to the
Pacific — the study of the Bible is most important. All have Bible
classes on Simday, and most of them have Bible-study classes through
the week. Of course, the kind of Bible -study that can be done by
the overworked, unstudious working-girls must differ widely from that
done in schools and colleges. The historical courses seem to be un-
popular, neither do the students who attend the Sunday services care
so much for the critical study, but they enjoy and talk about that which
can be made practical and assimilated in every-day life. The topical
BIBLE-STUDY IN THE Y. W. C. A. 301
plan meets with the largest measure of success. Biographical talks
and characters from the Bible are also much enjoyed.
The Bible-study classes differ from the Sunday services in having
smaller numbers taking up the study as they vi^ould any other topic and
doing real work. These courses of study cover a broader field and are
more thorough. The enthusiasm which is developed in these classes
depends largely on the teacher. The aim is to open up the beauties of
the wonderful Book, to foster the love for it, and to teach the pupils
how to find its spiritual help for themselves.
The mid-day services at the factories are a special feature of many
of our associations, and though brief and simple and practical, they are
much enjoyed.
Another method of reaching the young women is through the " Fa-
miliar Talks " on some every-day topic which will be of interest to them.
Sometimes they are announced with a fanciful title or one rather mys-
terious, so that curiosity will draw them to be listeners, and talkers too,
for the aim has been to draw them out, and to make them formulate
their ideas by putting them into remarks or questions. Under the
general topic of " What shall we talk about?" Paul's instructions to
the PhiHppians was made to cover a winter's monthly talks, by taking
one topic at a time, and giving it a special title; for instance, the " good
repute " was called " What other people think of us." " Prisoners,"
" Other people's queer ways," and " The power of friction " were topics
which gave opportunity, through every-day things, to touch a deeper
thought.
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF BOYS
EDWARD B. KAIGHN, M.D.
BIBLE CLASS TEACHER, SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
What are the characteristics of the adolescent boy differentiating
him from the child and the adult ? To mention but a few, there are
the manifest physical signs of rapidly lengthening arms and legs and
broadening shoulders; the disappearing of rounded childish features
for the squarer jaw and stronger lines of dawning maturity; the shifting
of the voice, with many creaks and squeaks and growls to a lower clef,
the rapid increase in weight, and the incipient signs of a mustache.
These and many other physical characteristics are evident to the dullest
observer. The psychological characteristics are probably just as great,
if not so strikingly obvious. The senses, as a rule, become keener, the
power to reason strongly develops, and the feelings are increasingly
under better control than during childhood. It is common experience
that the adolescent has spells of laziness or dullness, or great activity
or crankiness. His views of right and wrong, justice and injustice, and
the good and the bad are apt to be rigid, and he is willing to measure
himself by the standards he sets for others. He is at once practical and
very much of an idealist. He is secretive and self-conscious, and a con-
firmed hero-worshiper. When in physical danger he is courageous
to the point of foolhardiness, but in moral situations somewhat of a
coward. A new-born social impulse impels him to associate with boys
of his own age in a more or less well-organized gang. The sentiment
of the gang determines many of his actions, and strongly influences his
states of mind. His interest in out-door life is strong, as shown by his
fondness for hunting, camping, and athletics. He finds restraints of
any sort irksome, and he wants liberties denied his younger brother.
It is a time of forming warm friendships with older people, as well as
with those of his own age.
The spirit of altruism seems to have its birth in adolescence. The
unwillingness of a child to subordinate himself in his games is in marked
contrast to the team play manifest in adolescent sports. That it is a
time of religious impressibility all studies lead us to believe. Just to
what degree this spiritual awakening may be due to an unconscious
effort on the part of the adolescent to correct the faulty teaching of
earlier years, or to realize those states of feeling expected to accompany
the conversion of a mature sinner, we do not know.
302
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF BOYS 303
How may this knowledge guide the association worker in the re-
ligious education of boys?
In the first place, it may help to give the work a better aim. We see
that the adolescent period is one of rapid growth and adjustment. It
is the whole boy, and not only a part of him, that is growing and under-
going adjustment, and we cannot concern ourselves simply with his
soul and neglect all of the rest. The Young Men's Christian Associa-
tion is unique among religious agencies in its recognition of man's all-
round nature, but we do violence to the idea when we try to separate
into distinct natures the body, the mind, and the soul. It is the whole
boy that we are to help into the richest and fullest life. With that aim,
the gymnasium may be more of a religious agency than the Bible class.
It should be at least as much. The boy himself takes to this all-round
idea. To have Christ with him in his sports, to help him have a
strong mind, to help him love and serve the other fellows, is the burden
of the spontaneous prayers we often hear from the lips of boys about
the summer-night camp-fire or in the boys' meeting.
In the next place, this knowledge gives us points of contact with the
boy. For instance, there is the gang instinct. This may be made to
contribute instead of being a menace to the boy's higher — that is,
religious — life. To illustrate, the conventional agencies of religious
culture in the Young Men's Christian Association are the Bible class
and religious meeting, but instead of an unorganized meeting modeled
in most respects like an adult gathering, a club may be organized of
the entire membership, with officers, dues, rules, etc., — boys readily
take to parliamentary law, — and the particular form of meeting or
means to religious culture may be carried on by the leading boys with
but little adult supervision. Bible classes may be organized in the same
way. There are some so organized where the boys debate on Bible topics.
The fondness for secrecy in organization has been taken advantage
of for the religious good of boys in some associations in the organizing of
Bible classes on a Greek-letter fraternity basis, with all that it implies
of initiations, grips, signs, passwords, secret sessions, and pins of mystic
significance. There is the gang idea for younger boys of red Indian
organization, with braves, sagamores, and sachems.
Another point of contact is the hero-worshiping tendency. All
the notorious prize-fighters have an immense following among boys of
all classes. The feats of our naval and military heroes during the
Spanish- American war stirred boydom to the core. The most eloquent
clergyman in the city will not attract boys to a religious meeting to half
the extent the popular Yale or Harvard half-back will. The boy is
quick to recognize that the fighter or runner or football-player must use
304 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
his brains as well as his muscles. He knows that the clever or " foxy "
athlete is usually the winner. To admire mental and moral strength
is the next natural step that we may help the boy to take. The material
for illustration and study may not only be drawn from the Old and
New Testament characters, but from the fascinating field of missionary
effort, with its heroes of the Faith. All history in the past and history
in the making furnish examples of men and women who fought and
sacrificed for high principles. The heroes are not all dead. We can
make more vivid the Josephs and Samuels, Joshuas and Daniels, of
ancient times by combining with their study their modern types from
industrial, professional, or political life. The point is to take every
advantage of the hero-loving instinct to bring to the boy the examples
of the best sort of heroism, to help him to feel that present-day living is
not all pleasure-seeking or money-grubbing, and that there is a chance
for him to do something heroic. Jesus Christ may be made the boys'
Hero as well as the boys' Saviour. Because the boy is a hero-worshiper
he is an idealist. He will overlook the faults and magnify the virtues of
his ideal. Usually the ideal takes on the flesh and blood of some older
person whom he thoroughly likes and whose ways of doing and ways
of thinking he promptly imitates.
Within a year or so a number of boys' departments have secured ex-
cellent results in their Bible-class work by having popular older boys
act as teachers. Judged by educational standards, the teaching does
not rank very high, but it ties up a group of boys to some one whom
they sincerely believe in and whom they want to be like. The older
boy feels the responsibiUty of his position as most adult teachers do not,
and he is being developed in usefulness, instead of being just a recipient
of the privileges the association offers.
We find the adolescent boy to be a realist as well as an idealist. To
succeed in his rehgious education, we must keep in mind real ends.
ReUgious impulses must have a practical outlet in something more than
glibness in answering questions in the Bible class. In fact, too much
religious work for the boy is separated from the real life of the boy.
It is too external. It is a matter to the boy for a definite time and
definite place and from a definite book. We must make it easy for the
boy to give expression to his religious impulses in many ways of useful
effort. Help him to find opportunities that are religious, in the broad
sense as well as in the more restricted. Praying or talking to another
boy about Christ is good; so is keeping the back alley clean.
Service for the good of others counteracts a tendency for too much
introspection; a tendency in some cases running into morbidness, with
much attending mental suffering.
THE PROBLEMS OF A TWENTIETH-CENTURY CITY
Outlines of a Course in Philanthropies
PROFESSOR H. M. BURR
INTERNATIONAL YOUNG MEN's CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION TRAINING-SCHOOL,
SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
The following outline has been prepared in response to the request
of the committee of the Department of Associations for a course of
twenty-five lessons in " Philanthropies. " It was the intention of the
committee that the word " philanthropy " should be used in its large
sense, thus allowing the treatment of the " Problems of a Twentieth-
century City " under that head. Before outlining such a course, it is
in order to give some reasons why such a course should have an im-
portant place in a curriculum of religious education.
Such a curriculum must include not merely the study of the nature
and history of religion and the psychology of the religious nature, but
also the activities of religion. By religious activities is meant those to
which men are inspired by a religious motive, or which are the products
of religious institutions or incentives. It is not necessary for us to enter
into any careful analysis of the nature of the religious motive. It is
enough to call attention to the fact that from the beginning Christianity
has expressed itself in philanthropy. A genuine love to God has always
expressed itself in the service of man. Such being the case, a study
of the principles and practice of social service must be of first importance
in religious education; and that, not merely for the sake of religious
intelligence, but for the development of the religious nature.
A study of philanthropy will naturally center in the city, since
cities are the strategic points of our modern civilization. In the cities
are massed, not merely the most powerful economic and political forces,
but also the most powerful ethical and educational forces. In the
cities all the forces which make for righteousness and against it meet
in deadly conflict. We find there are not merely all the problems of
the ages past, but of the age present and to come. Cities are on the
firing-line of the march of civilization.
The Young Men's Christian Association is itself a product of city
life. It is an organized attempt on the part of the church to meet one
of the most pressing needs of city life, a social center for young men,
where all wholesome and educative influences shall be massed attract-
ively and effectively. We have long since recognized that the effective
305
3o6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
worker must be an expert in all that pertains to the life of young men.
It is evident that the men who are in the field are realizing that they
must study not only the young man himself, but the great city of which
he is an organic part. The secretaries and directors of the association
must become experts in municipal sociology. In studying the lives of
young men, they will become so of necessity. As a matter of fact, the
officers of the association constitute a natural bureau of information
as to all the forces and conditions of city life which affect young men.
In some of our largest and most effective associations, the secretaries
are becoming recognized as specialists in the problems of city life, both
to the benefit of the city and their ovm work.
In order to meet these conditions, it is clear that the study of municipal
sociology should be a part of the training of those who are to be leaders
in association work, but in addition to this there is a large group of
young men in every city community who need to study intelligently and
thoroughly the problems of city life and the forces which make for civic
righteousness.
The following is the outline of a course of twenty-five such lessons,
designed to meet the needs of young men in our average associations.
It is a modification of a course given to the students in the Young Men's
Christian Association Training School in Springfield, where a similar
course is being followed in the local Association.
Owing to limitations of time and space, only the general headings
of the lessons have been given, with a suggestive but not complete bibli-
ography.
The conduct of the course in any special field will be determined
by local conditions, and the teachers, speakers, and books which are
available. The following suggestions will apply, however, in most city
associations: The class should be organized as a club, say a " Civic
Club," or a " Social Welfare Club," with president, vice-president,
secretary, treasurer, and at least a programme and social committee. It
will help the effectiveness of the club immensely if a man of high standing
in the community can be secured as president. If possible, a teacher
should be chosen who is familiar with the general field to be covered,
and a specialist in some part of it. To him should be given the general
organization of the course of study and the assignment of special topics
of investigation to members of the club. If the club or class is well
officered and respectable in size and enthusiasm, it will not be difficult
to get in as speakers men who are specialists in some department of
philanthropy, or who are or have been in the service of the city. A
large club will be able to attract speakers of more than local fame.
THE PROBLEMS OF A TWENTIETH CENTURY CITY 307
Ideally, as large a number of themes as possible should be given to the
members of the club for investigation. Care must be taken, however,
to distribute such studies in such a way as to break up any monotony.
Club suppers and occasional " ladies' nights " will add to the enthusi-
asm of the organization, and so to the quality of its work.
The following suggestions may be of help in carrying out such a course
as the one outlined. " The City in its Relation to Civihzation " may
be the theme of an inspirational and suggestive address given by the
teacher or any capable man in sympathy with the aims of the club.
After such an address will be a good time to organize the club. " The
Growth of Modem Cities " can probably best be treated by the teacher,
making use of the charts given in the last Statistical Atlas. The sub-
jects of lessons 3,4, 5,6, can be divided between specialists and members
of the class. The city physician, the chairman of the board of health,
the city forester, and the officers of local hospital associations should be
available. As to how far the problems of morals, lessons 7, 8, 9, 10,
may be studied through investigations of local conditions, there will
be difference of opinion. The literature of the subject is copious and
well adapted to analysis by members of the club. In the study of the
problems of philanthropy the representatives of local institutions can
be used, but members of the club should be encouraged to visit them
and report. The principal of the high school, the superintendent of
schools or teachers should be enlisted in the discussion of the problems
of education. To lend variety to the work, the problems of adminis-
tation might be treated through club debates, while city officials may
be secured to explain the nature of their work. The representatives
of various welfare agencies will naturally explain the work of their or-
ganizations. The last theme, " Christianity and the Social Spirit,"
should be presented by the very largest man available, and should be
the grand summing up of the year's work.
The Problems of a Twentieth Century City
Introductory
Lesson i. The City in its Relation to Civilization. Historical.
Lesson 2. The Growth of Modern Cities. Causes and Conse-
quences.
Health
Lesson 3. Dwellings. Tenements and Tenement-house Reform.
Lesson 4. Streets — Relation to Health, Cleaning, Regulation, Use.
Lesson 5. Parks, Playgrounds, Public Baths, Recreation Piers, etc.
Lesson 6. Hospitals and Sanitaria, Public Hygiene,
3o8 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Morals
Lesson 7. The Saloon. Its Social Function, Suppression, Substitu-
tion.
Lesson 8. The Brothel. The Social Evil. Control of Prostitution.
Lesson 9. The Theater. Wholesome and Unwholesome Amuse-
ment.
Lesson 10. The Gambling Den. The Gambling Habit in Business.
Philanthropy
Lesson 11. The Care of Dependents, Orphans, Paupers, etc.
Lesson 12. The Care of Defectives, Idiots, Insane, Blind, etc.
Lesson 13. The Care of Dehnquents, Jails, Reformatories, Courts,
Police.
Lesson 14. The Organization of Charities, Indoor and Outdoor Re-
lief.
Lesson 15. Welfare Work. Special Work in Store and Shop.
Education
Lesson 16. The Public School. Its Fimction and Administration.
Lesson 17. School Extension. The Wider Utilization of Buildings.
Lesson 18. Technical and Physical Education. Religious Educa-
tion. *
Administration
Lesson 19. The Mayor, Council, Aldermen, Departments, Choice
and Control.
Lesson 20. Municipal Reform. " The Shame of American Cities."
Welfare Agencies
Lesson 21. The Church. Work of Institutional Church.
Lesson 22. The Social Settlements. Neighborhood Guilds.
Lesson 23. The Young Men's and Young Women's Christian
Associations.
Lesson 24. Other Welfare Agencies.
Lesson 25. The Social Mission of Christianity.
XI. YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETIES
A MORE COMPREHENSIVE BASIS FOR THE UNION OF
YOUNG PEOPLE IN THEIR SOCIETIES
REV. SPENSER B. MEESER, D.D.
PASTOR WOODWARD AVENUE BAPTIST CHURCH, DETROIT, MICHIGAN
Young people's societies ought to furnish, through organized sug-
gestion, opportunity for the conversion of impressions of truth into
expressions of character and service; opportunity to translate truth-
impressions into action-expressions.
Young people need just this organized effort for expression of im-
pression, and this, because they need the guidance, the inspiriting and
energizing, — the genius, in a word, for Christian living. We must in-
struct them in the facts of religion, educate them in the spirit of religion,
and energize them in the practice of religion, by organizing them for
service and character- making. Every church, Bible school, and young
people's society should have these three principles for maturing of
the instruction given: (a) Educate the young people in religion;
(6) evangelize them through that education; and (c) organize
them for the practice of the truth learned and the life gained through
the Holy Spirit.
As at present constituted, young people's societies are not inclusive
of all the forms of Christian service; but are organized around one
form, and only indifferently acknowledge and cultivate other forms
of Christian service. They are organized around the prayer-meeting
idea. They are not broad enough at the base. They permit any form
of Christian service; they require one form. When the requirement
is met, the members may engage in many services; until the require-
ment is met, no matter how many forms of, or how much of, service
is done, one cannot be a member. Explicitly in a pledge, or impHcitly
in a constitution, the organific principle, the basis of union, is the prayer-
meeting, conducting it or taking part in it. That is sine qua non.
After that, several things; equal with that, or before it, nothing. That
is why in almost any church, it is true that a larger portion of young
people are not in these societies. That is why these societies, as at
present constituted, cannot meet this need. Thousands of young peo-
ple cannot worthily, or to edification, either pray or exhort in meeting.
Thousands more ought not, because of immaturity of experience, lack
309
3IO THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
of knowledge, and failure of character. Thousands more should be
at home when evening meetings are held, and have no advantage to
Christian character in being abroad nights, when they should be at
home under protection of parents. Especially is this true of junior
societies. The pity of putting all young people through that test of
speaking in meeting! The blunders many have made in supposing
that that is the goal of Christian service, or, as some think, the essence
of it! The pathos of the junior societies! with their temptation to
unreality, and the attempts of the children to bear testimony concern-
ing a Christian experience they never had, and never could have, nor-
mally, at their age. My point is, simply, that the prayer-meeting is
not all, nor is it the essential Christian service.
The true and comprehensive basis for such an organization as I
have in mind, and such as young people need — the true basis — is,
any form oj Christian service. Any one willing to give himself to any
form of Christian service should be included in the membership,
come under direction of, and co-operate with, the society. The prayer-
meeting service is one, and a profoundly important, form of that ser-
vice; but there are others. A primary element in the final form of
yoimg people's societies is, that the basis of union shall be made to be
comprehensive, and the essential test oj membership, simply some kind
oj service done jor Christ's sake.
It is my firm and growing conviction that the young people's
society in a church should be the manual-training department, the
school of practice, the workshop, for the expression in deeds of the
truth learned in the study of God's word, and in the preaching of the
minister.
The present plan of the young people's organization is artificial and
mechanical, analytic and not constructive. It applies a test as the
basis for a general organization, and then attempts to set at a variety
of work (in so far as it departs from one idea at all) those who have
first submitted to the test.
The true plan appears to be to have organized groups, undertaking
such things as they may wish to do, or can do, or as are appropriate
for them. These groups should then be federated in a general organi-
zation, the membership basis of which comprehends all those things
included in the groups, and any others which may be apparent as
likely to become the central idea of other groups. Such a plan is
inductive, constructive, and comprehensive.
I herewith submit a proposed or model constitution, suggesting
the form of such an organization.
A BASIS FOR THE UNION OF YOUNG PEOPLE 311
Model Constitution for Young People's Unions
Preamble. In order to the unification of young people's work in
those churches where there are a number of organizations composed
of young people, the following model constitution is recommended:
Name. This organization shall be called " + of the church."
Object. Its object shall be the correlation of the various depart-
ments of young people's work, and the close relation of it to the work
of the church itself, under the leadership of the Pastor.
Membership. The membership shall consist of all those who are
members of the existing organizations of young people in the church,
which have received the approval of the church; and of members of
all organizations of young people which may be formed with the sanc-
tion of the church hereafter; or any other young persons who will
declare their purpose to engage in some one or more forms of Christian
service.
The Council of Conference. There shall be a Council of Con-
ference, consisting of the Pastor, the President and Secretary of each
young people's organization, of which Council the Pastor shall be the
Chairman, which shall meet at least once a month, to consider the en-
tire work of the young people of the church. The representatives, in
this Council, of the different organizations, shall report, to their re-
spective bodies, such plans as have been suggested by the council for
the advancement of the work as a whole. This Council shall prepare
by-laws for the government of the union, and present the same for
adoption by members of the union. This Council shall also seek out
young persons who for any reason cannot engage in any of the forms
of service represented by the affiliated bodies, but who will commit
themselves individually to some other definite Christian service.
Relation of Union to Affiliated Societies. The different
organizations, while being left free to carry out plans of their own
initiation, shall be regarded as departments of the Young People's
Union, and will be expected to maintain the closest afl&liation with
each other, under the general direction of the Council of Conference.
Meetings of the Union. The Union shall hold quarterly meet-
ings for general open discussion, proposing new work, organization of
new departments, etc.
Relation of the Union to Existing Young People's Unions.
It is advised, in case there is a young people's society already existing in
the church, if this Constitution is adopted, that, to avoid confusion
of names, the title of the existing body be changed to " The Devotional
312 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
League of the , " thus indicating that the existing society is a
department of the new Union.'
Type of the Pledge. " Relying upon Divine help, I hereby de-
clare my purpose to be true to Christ in all things and at all times;
to seek the New Testament standard of Christian experience and
life; and to engage actively in one or more lines of Christian service."
Kinds of Organizations Eligible. Among the organizations or
societies such as are in mind for this affiliation are Baptist Young
People's Unions, Christian Endeavor Societies, Epworth Leagues,
Westminster Leagues, Young People's Societies, King's Daughters and
Sons, Boys' Clubs, Girls' Clubs, Missionary Circles, Farther Light
Circles, Young Men's Associations, Young Women's Associations, etc.
All members of these and kindred societies, groups, clubs (they being
approved by the church), are eligible to membership in this Union.
By-Laws. To this Constitution may be added, by method described
in the section on " Council of Conference," all by-laws, rules of order,
etc., desired by any Union for its government.
The question what lines of organization should be followed for the
groups in the proposed federation or union, is of serious moment.
One or two principles must undoubtedly be followed, (a) Every
group should be engaged in the culture of Christian character through
some educational or study work, and likewise engaged in some service
for expression of character and its culture in missionary or benevo-
lent or social work. That is, each group should have as its aim an
inner culture and an outer service. If the method followed is to be
the organization of the Bible school classes, some study additional to
that undertaken in the Bible school should, if possible, be made a dis-
tinct feature.
(b) We should not endeavor to limit the forms of expression to
such only as may be universally used, failure in most cases arising
from the endeavor to find some one form equally applicable and help-
ful to all. We must keep in mind the infinite variety of temperament
ability, habit, and education, so that the suggested forms shall touch as
many of the varied types among the young people as is possible.
(c) We should not insist upon mature expression of Christian
character from immature Christian young people. Therefore the
kinds of service to be regarded as acceptable need not all of them pre-
' The existence of a society of any other name, having in mind chiefly the devotional aim,
need not present any serious difficulty. Its members become members of the larger union on the
same basis as membei-s of other organizations having other aims chiefly in mind, and will find in
the new affiliation larger opportunity for making their particular work the devotional center of the
whole Union, on the purely voluntary basis, instead of the pledge basis.
A BASIS FOR THE UNION OF YOUNG PEOPLE 313
sent the form of mature piety; but need only have the quahties of
utility, benevolence, morality, and a general helpfulness which looks
toward a sane and mature piety.
What can we do, what shall we do, while waiting for the possibiUty
of such an organization?
1. Try to persuade your young people's society to organize on
this comprehensive basis. Point out the failure to include all young
people in church, and especially to save to the Bible school and church
the young men and women sUpping away. Exalt to due and proper
place all forms of Christian activity.
2. If you cannot persuade the young people so to organize, as to
include freely all who will do something for Christ, without requiring the
prayer-meeting test, then organize your Bible school classes, each class
by itself, around some form of service, which they may voluntarily
choose to enter upon. Here, I beheve, is one way of preserving the
interest of young people in the Bible school, and of retaining the scholars
at that age, when they are wont to give up the school.
There is also a group of social reasons why the organized class is
the best way to organize the young people in the school and church .
Nowhere in the church have the yoimg people associated themselves
in a group so much, or so nearly wholly, because of social affinities,
as in the average Bible school class. They begin as a class in the
wholly democratic spirit of little children, and are advanced in a body
to the intermediate department, but differentiation soon begins. Some
drop out, some seek other classes, new scholars, generally social com-
rades, are brought in, and the changes of evolution continue mitil it is
soon apparent that the average Bible school class is the most homo-
geneous and actually acceptable company, socially, around the church.
What differences have been incapable of elimination have been min-
imized by constant association; and in youth the class represents, as
nearly as possible under rehgious auspices, the ideal of good-fellow-
ship, a " gang " if it be boys, a " set " if it be girls. The social hun-
ger aids, therefore; and if this social imit be made a religious unit,
a service unit, by organization for a religious purpose, another serious
element of continuity in religious life is added.
The longer I regard the matter, the less sure I am that, for all
the needs of opportunity to convert truth-impression into action-ex-
pression, the organized classes are not better than any single organiza-
tion of young people, however comprehensive may be its plan and
outlook. Only experience can tell. The idea is, in general, new.
Time would reveal; but some experience has given assurance that it is so.
314 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Two classes of objection arise naturally: First as to the multi-
plicity of organizations. Such would be the case only when there was
no inspiring Christian life to keep the many organizations in action;
that there is a multiplicity of services, and each idea needs a body after
its kind. We need, for the full opportunity of developing each and all,
the searching emphasis upon each individual, which only many small
organizations can efiect.
The second objection likely to arise is that such a plan institutes
and perpetuates cliques among the young people. Let it be admitted
at once. It does. But I raise the question, " Why not cultivate the
clique?" How more effectively reach and hold the individuals? Is
not this the idea of the Y. M. C. A. in their boys' departments and
men's movements ? They have recognized that, in all life, boys group
themselves, according to social affinities, into what are called " gangs,"
and that if they are effectually to win the individual boy, they must
carry the " gang " with them. Their advantage is that they recog-
nize no denominational group, but can take and work with the boys
in the group to which their social affinities have joined them. The
Young Women's Associations already recognize and work on the same
principle among young women.
Now, why not in the church, young people's society, and Bible
school, cultivate the clique? The cHques are there, anyhow. No
one, who has ever sought social imity in church or school, has been able
to escape the knowledge of this; and the social unity of either has al-
ways been fovmd wellnigh impossible, save in very small churches,
which are, to all intents, simply a group of those socially affiliated.
What young people's societies must do for young people, then, is,
give largest opportunity for action-expression of truth impression, or
the rationale of Bible-study is lost, and rational young people will give
it up.
The best way to grant this is by an organized effort that will both
suggest and make ways for action-expression.
The present young people's societies are organized too narrowly
to give this opportunity.
It is needful to reorganize them on a more comprehensive basis,
inclusive of all forms of Christian activity.
A BASIS FOR THE UNION OF YOUNG PEOPLE 315
Discussion
MR. WILLIAM SHAW
TREASURER OF THE UNITED SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR,
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
The title of the paper is, in my opinion, as misleading as the plan
suggested is impracticable and unworkable in the average church. To
be really comprehensive, it should provide for the needs of the average,
not of the exceptional, church. Instead of a more comprehensive basis
for the union of young people in their societies, it outlines a plan which,
if it could be used at all, could be used only by the small minority of
churches that have a large membership and a multiplicity of organiza-
tions. Instead of simplifying the machinery, it makes it more complex.
All it pleads for is secured now in our societies wherever there is compe-
tent local leadership, and without that no plan will succeed.
By its system of committee and department work, the young people's
society meets the needs of the average church, and is doing an infinite
variety of helpful Christian service. It also has the added advantage
over the plan suggested in the paper, that, instead of one little group of
young people having a monopoly of one kind of service, all the members
have an equal opportunity for training along special lines, and also for
development as all-round Christian workers. Provision is also made
in the present plan of work by which the exceptional churches with
large numbers of young people can organize their society into two or
more sections, thus making a place for the training and development
of every young person in the congregation.
Furthermore, the Christian Endeavor method already provides a
simple plan for federating clubs, classes, and organizations of various
kinds, doing specific work in the local church, by which the members
become affiliated members of the broader, more definitely religious, and
more comprehensive organization, the Society of Christian Endeavor.
The executive committee, which consists of the officers, chairmen of
committees, and superintendents of departments, furnishes a cabinet
through which the pastor can suggest and direct every line of work.
In its reference to the junior societies and the prayer-meetings, the
paper, in my opinion, utterly misstates the real condition of things. It
misrepresents thousands of the most devoted and intelligent workers in
our churches, who are freely giving their time to training the boys and
girls in our junior societies in perfectly natural and normal ways to love
and work for Christ and the church. Junior societies do not meet at
night, neither do they encourage the giving of unreal religious experien-
3i6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
ces. I have attended hundreds of junior meetings and conferred with
thousands of superintendents, and have never yet seen the "pathetic and
harmful exhibitions " referred to in the paper. But I have seen com-
panies of eager Httle ones repeating their Bible verses, singing their
beautiful songs, listening to the old, old story of Christ's love for the
children, planning for their missionary or temperance meeting, making
scrap-books for the hospitals, packing boxes for the missionaries, and
carrying sunshine and cheer and flowers and fruit to the sick and infirm.
Why should it be considered such an unnatural thing for a Christian
to take part in a prayer-meeting? Why should the prayer-meeting be
reserved for the gifted few who think they can speak ," to edification?"
It is that idea that has nearly killed our prayer -meetings and relegated
to the minister the expression of religious truth. We do not apply that
rule in our family life. Why should we in the church family? Not
even modern pedagogy has applied that rule in our schools, for still
every scholar, gifted or ungifted, is required to "take part " in the
classroom.
Our young people's prayer-meetings and junior societies are not
places where unreal experiences are related or expected. But they are
places where the mature and the immature, the experienced and the
inexperienced, can in appropriate ways express themselves as members
in the family of God and scholars in the school of Christ. If the charac-
ter of the meetings prevents the natural expression of religious truth,
let us change their character.
When the day of Pentecost was fully come, every man heard the
message in his own language. They need to hear it to-day in the lan-
guage of the mechanic and the merchant, the clerk and the cash-girl, the
shipper and the stenographer, the servant and the mistress, the rich and
the poor, the educated and the uneducated.
But, having said this for the prayer-meeting, and much more could be
said, I affirm that the present young people's society is a training-school
for every form of Christian service, with this advantage over the plan
suggested in the paper, that it has a heart at the center, keeping the hands
and feet and brain supplied with rich red blood. I could weary you and
fill the volume of proceedings with reports of actual work done and
service rendered along every line of missionary, educational, social, and
philanthropic work by our young people's societies. They stand for
expression by both life and lip. Not either, but both.
Here is an outline of the varied forms of service in which Christian
Endeavor Societies are engaged and for which they will receive special
recognition at the Baltimore convention.
A BASIS FOR THE UNION OF YOUNG PEOPLE 317
I. (a) Recognition for societies that for six months have had seventy-
five per cent of their active members present and participating in the
meetings.
(b) For societies in which five or more of their members have
joined the church.
(c) For societies that have fifty per cent, of their members " Com-
rades of the Quiet Hour."
II. (a) For conspicuously good committee-work along any line.
(b) For forming and sustaining junior and intermediate societies
by junior committees of the young people's society.
(c) For forming affiliated groups of young people along mission-
ary, literary, musical lines, boys' clubs, etc.
III. For societies that have made special efforts along lines of reli-
gious education, that have taken one or more courses in the correspond-
ence school, formed a Christian Endeavor correspondence school
class, mission-study class, a class for the study of the Bible, of church
history and doctrine, or other effort of this sort.
IV. For societies that show the best record of beneficence, that have
given the largest sums per capita for missions, or that have the most
members belonging to the Tenth Legion, or that have been successful
in some other definite plan of systematic and proportionate giving.
V. For societies that report conspicuously good work for the welfare
of their community, social or political reforms, temperance work, and
other lines of good citizenship, education, and public spirit, town and
village improvement in beautifying public and private property, etc.
If these things are not done in any certain society, it is not because
the opportunity is wantmg, but because the society lacks the leadership
or ability to grasp it. What is needed is more power, not another ma-
chine. Sometimes objection is made to the wording of the pledge.
Then write a better one. Sometimes additions are needed to the con-
stitution. Make them; the opportunity is yours; use it.
WHAT THE MISSIONARY SOCIETIES ARE DOING TO
INTEREST THE YOUNG PEOPLE IN MISSIONS
MR. S. EARL TAYLOR
FIELD SECRETARY MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
NEW YORK CITY
In February, 1905, in America alone, seventeen of thel leading mis-
sionary boards had special secretaries who had supervision of young
people's work, and ten other societies were giving much attention to the
subject under secretaries who, in addition to supervising the young peo-
ple's work, had to do with other activities. In some of these boards
provision has been made for a regular young people's department with
a special budget. In others, provision is made under the regular appro-
priation for home administration and cultivation.
The great outstanding fact that seventeen of the leading missionary
societies of this country have been led within recent years to give special
attention to the missionary education of the young is of prime importance,
whether considered as a factor in the religious education of the country,
or in its relation to the establishment of the kingdom of Jesus Christ
upon the earth. So far as the writer has knowledge, one of the most
remarkable movements in the whole range of religious educational
activities in this country is now taking place in connection with what
has been characterized as " the missionary uprising of the young people."
It is only comparable with the widespread movement in connection
with the organization of the great young people's societies and the
parallel movement which resulted in the Student Christian Associations,
the Student Volunteer Movement and in the World's Student Christian
Federation.
One of the lirst things being attempted by the young people's
departments of the missionary societies is to secure a proper organiza-
tion of the forces. The work must practically be done de novo in denom-
inations where there is no young people's organization, and even in
cases where the great young people's societies are organized, the mis-
sionary societies in some instances have found it necessary to place
emphasis upon the importance of the organization of a missionary
department in connection with these young people's societies. Six
years ago most of the young people's societies scheduled quarterly
missionary topics upon the devotional topic-card. Now, however, the
leading young people's societies have monthly missionary topics upon
318
WHAT THE MISSIONARY SOCIETIES ARE DOING 319
the topic-cards, and a page or more of the official organ of the society
is given to the preparation of helps for these meetings. Moreover, the
missionary societies, through the young people's departments, are
rendering additional help by way of the preparation of special pro-
grammes, and the collection of the best leaflet literature bearing upon
the particular topic under consideration.
Recently, the series of Forward Mission Study Courses have been
projected, and five splendid courses of study prepared especially for the
young people have been issued, the latest book of the series being on
home missions, and the others being on some phase of foreign mission-
ary work. Of these text-books, 100,550 have been sold during the past
two years, and of the text-book, " Sunrise in the Sunrise Kingdom, ' ' the
book on Japan which is being used by the classes this year, eleven
imprint editions have been issued for as many missionary societies or
denominational publishing houses of this country, and several hundred
copies have been sent to the Church Missionary Society in Great Britain.
Not less than 50,000 young people are stud)ang missions this year in
America, and one denomination alone reports that 35,000 have been
enrolled in mission-study under the direction of its young people's
department since 1900.
The rapid development of missionary work among young people is
strikingly illustrated by what has taken place in connection with the
production of missionary libraries for young people. There are now
two ten-dollar missionary libraries, which are known respectively as
Missionary Campaign Library No. i and Missionary Campaign Library
No. 2. There are also three special five-dollar libraries, designed to be
used by the classes in connection with their mission, study-work. For
instance, in connection with " Simrise in the Sunrise Kingdom," the
current text-book on Japan, a library of nine volumes is available.
This library has been carefully chosen by an interdenominational
library committee, of which Mr. Harlan P. Beach, the educational
Secretary of the Student Volunteer Movement is chairman, and it
undoubtedly contains nine of the very best missionary books on
Japan.
The libraries mentioned above are being used in most of the denom-
inations in connection with their young people's work, and early in Janu-
ary of this year it was reported that 8,688 of these libraries had been
sold, aggregating 145,405 volumes.
Attractive literature upon the subject of giving is being produced.
Special programmes are prepared for use in connection with the devo-
tional meetings of the young people's societies, and an increasing number
320 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
of young people are enrolling under some form of Christian steward-
ship pledge or declaration of purpose.
Local, group, metropolitan, district, state and provincial, denomina-
tional and interdenominational, national and international conventions
are the order of the day. Missionary speakers are in demand. Sugges-
tions for missionary departments of programmes are eagerly sought and
conferences on practical methods of missionary work are among the
most popular features of convention programmes. This means that the
missionary societies, through their young people's departments have a-
great field of usefulness in seeking to guide the convention activities, so
far as they relate to the cause of missions. Most of the young people's
departments are giving this question most careful thought, and one
young people's department alone last spring provided missionary speak-
ers and suggested missionary topics for more than sixty conventions.
It has become necessary for some of the missionary societies to provide
extensive exhibits in dupHcate form, which are loaned upon occasion.
Wherever these exhibits have been furnished, it has been found that
they are in constant demand and therefore in constant circulation.
Much of the work outlined above has been made possible by the fact
that the missionary societies of America have, through their young
people's departments, created what is known as the Young People's
Missionary Movement, which is practically a clearing-house of ideas.
Any good plan or method developed by one denomination is through
this agency readily passed on to another, and not only are mission-study
text-books and libraries made possible for interdenominational use, but
accessory material, such as maps, charts, etc., is being made available
for the young people at a minimum cost by this organization, which is
able to manufacture and conduct its work on a wholesale basis.
MISSIONARY LITERATURE AND YOUNG PEOPLE
MR. W. HENRY GRANT
HONORARY LIBRARIAN BOARD OF THE FOREIGN MISSIONS LIBRARY OF THE
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY
The study of missions is the study of the world and its need, and
what the gospel has done and is doing in the world. If the main object
of education is character and preparation for the work of life, and to
fulfil one's destiny nobly, doing things at hand with far-sighted vision,
and large human feeling, and to know by personal experience what it is
to have the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit, then
missionary hterature holds a high place in Christian education. The
history of missions is a /io/>e-inspiring study. It corrects the pessimistic
tendency of young people when they meet the social problems and
rehgious indifference of their age. Missionary literature contains
incidents of the highest motive value to teacher and taught. It has an
immediate effect upon the way a girl or boy does his work. It applies
to every-day duty the imperative now which makes present effort and
present study count.
The problem of getting missionary literature used is the same as any
other educational or rehgious problem. It is a personal problem,
involving the personaUty of the teacher or friend. It is a problem of
adaptability. It is a problem of measure and correlation. It is a
problem of utiHzing the social influences of the band, the society, the
Sunday school class, the family, etc. It is a problem of investment,
participation, interest. Interest is bought at the price of effort. It is
through the narrow gate of hard work we enter any new field of interest.
Curiosity may lead up to the gate, but effort is needed before we get any
further than the threshold. In acquiring a new art or in developing a
dormant faculty, there is always a greater quantity of conscious effort at
the beginning than there is later, when effort itself becomes a source of
pleasure. Where faithful work follows, interest begets interest and goes
on compounding interest at an enormous rate. It is the veteran mis-
sionary, the old missionary war-horse, who is the most enthusiastic and
most able to impart that enthusiasm to others. It is said that what you
get people to love is more important than what you get them to learn.
But the two should be closely united from the beginning. It is better
to get one book well mastered, with the religious motive running through
it understood, than many piecemeal references read aloud in a missionary
321
322 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
meeting without any correlation. First impulses are usually imparted
by a personality. Some encouragement is needed to make the young
reader feel that what is coming later is worth the output of effort.
Use oj Present Literature. There are an increasing number of selected
lists of books for missionary libraries. These can be had by writing to
the different movements and the missionary boards. There are quite
a number of new juvenile books for children under twelve. There are
almost no hooks }or boys and girls over twelve. A short list for younger
children would include: " Tatong," " Twelve Little Pilgrims Who
Stayed at Home," " The Great Big World," A Missionary Walk in the
Zoo," " The Chinese Boy and Girl," " Children in Blue and What
They Do," " Gilmour and His Boys," " God's Earth, or Well Worth,"
" Wliat 's O'clock?" " Our Chinese Neighbors."
For those from ten to sixteen, the list would include some books
which, though not altogether missionary, serve the purpose of awakening
interest.
With a little promoting, for those who have developed the habit of
reading we may add the following: " Bishop Hannington " or "Perils
and Adventure in Africa," " John G. Paton," " Adoniram Judson,"
" John Kenneth Mackenzie," "Mackay of Uganda," " On the Oregon
Trail " by Parkman.
There are a few introductory books for older young people who are
already interested to some degree in religious reading. For example,
" The Bishop's Conversion," " Little Green God," " The Vanguard,"
and " Gale's " Korean Sketches."
Missionary Literature Needed. With all the accumulated treasures
of the past, much remains to be done. We have as yet no life of David
Livingstone suitable for a boy. This may be said of most of the litera-
ture published. The making of a missionary-book or the writing of a
missionary article should be classed among the fine arts. Older readers
value most of them for their description of special fields, rather than for
their literary excellence and appeal to the imagination. They are often
better fuel for a fire well started then for kindling.
In writing books, in using missionary literature and books of travel,
and in directing others in their readings and study, let us not become
literary globe-trotters without a purpose. One of the leading Japanese
Christians differentiates the Bible from all other books by this expression,
" The Bible is a God-intoxicated book." Starting with the missionary
story which began in the Old Testament and was continued in the New
Testament, let us follow the progress of the gospel down to our own day,
when almost more are brought to Christ in a year than were converted
MISSIONARY LITERATURE AND YOUNG PEOPLE 323
during the first century of the Christian era. Those triumphs should
inspire us to greater endeavor and more intense devotion.
If, then, the young people are to recognize their high calling in Christ
Jesus, and are to take their part in the great world movement of which
Christ is leader, they must be brought into vital contact with the lives
and work of the Judsons and Careys and Mofifats of modem missions,
till each one shall joyfully cry out with Paul, the first foreign missionary
since Calvary, " Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether by Ufe
or by death; for me to live is Christ and to die is gain "!
XII. THE HOME
THE PART OF THE HOME IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
PROFESSOR CHARLES R. HENDERSON, Ph. D., D. D.
THE UNIVERSITY OF' CHICAGO, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
This general subject has already been ably discussed in certain as-
pects before this Association. The present contribution will come from
a different field of study.
I. Historical. The domestic group, or " matrimonial institution,"
has assumed many forms during the rise and development of civil'zation,
and humanity has tried all possible kinds of experiments in order to
come to the conclusion to make monogamy, with all it implies, the law
of social order; and the impulses of the race tend to become innate and
the customs traditional, which require this form to be perpetual.
In all stages, from the earliest mother-group to the modern family,
the domestic community has always been the primary association of
human beings, the undifferentiated stock out of which all the specialized
agencies and institutions of society have grown. It would be incredible
to think that all this long, racial experience has left no trace in our physi-
cal nature, our deep instincts, our traditional conceptions, our social
organization, our methods of regulating conduct.
While there has been no one universal order of specialization, there
has been, in general, an advance from the condition in which the domestic
group, or the closely knit blood-kin, did almost everything for itself
without exchange of goods and services, to the present situation, in which
the bread-winner of a family buys all he needs for his own by the
exchange of one form of service for all that the world has to offer.
Even now, and in the complicated life of a city, the family is an
important industrial organization, cares for the health of its members,
is alert to protect them from danger, governs them by a domestic code,
judges their causes, disciplines them for faults, instructs them in arts
and science, trains them in morality, and furnishes them a sanctuary
for worship. Only gradually, with reluctance and pain, do the parents
transfer their offspring to the larger life of the world and surrender their
leadership in culture and control.
There is no one " underlying idea " in the family which will account
for it. The family grows naturally out of all the elementary desires of
our human nature, physical, aesthetic, ethical, and spiritual. To say
324
THE PART OF THE HOME IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 325
with one very interesting writer that obedience is the " underlying idea,"
is to make us satisfied with a partial and superficial explanation. The
family is a complete community of material and mental goods, and
attempted simplification of interpretation is distortion and mutilation.
All later and larger forms of association merely enlarge and specialize
the activities of the domestic group. It is precisely this fact which gives
to the family its unique place and importance in relation to education
and social progress. Religion, morality, culture, noble politics — all
interests suffer if domestic conduct is defective or immoral.
II. The educational function of the family is permanent. There is a
quite general belief in some quarters that the educational work of the
family is about to be surrendered to special social agencies of education,
to the school. Some influential writers, generally of the socialistic
tendency, have drawn up an argument for holding this belief. Their
chief reason is that ordinary parents are incapable of instructing and
training children and youth; that only the state can furnish nurses and
teachers who have the scientific and professional equipment for the
worthy task of preparing youth for citizenship.
There is a plausible cover for this view, just enough neglected truth
in it to delude the unwary and to awaken the prudent. Much of the
current discussion among church leaders overlooks the body of facts
which socialist agitators have in mind, and which are manifest in the
crowded habitations of our huge cities. There it is unquestionably
true that very many girls marry too young, without necessary physical
maturity and without preparation for motherhood, and with only such
education as they can acquire in a primary school and years of special-
ized labor in a department store or in a factory. It would be well for
our country and for the cause of religion if those who write about moral
and spiritual education would take adequate pains to bring these deplor-
able conditions within their mental horizon. We have able and con-
vincing essays on home religion, which are quite suitable for people who
have homes; but the average flat-building, occupied by low-paid, un-
skilled laborers with irregular employment, presents radically different
problems, and the conditions call for different methods. Persons long
resident in social settlements, and patient missionaries among immi-
grants, reveal another region, which the ordinary pastor or Sunday
school teacher, psychologist, and seminary professor, living in snug com-
fort, must regard as alien to all he knows. It is this alien world which
the socialist has chiefly in his memory when he claims that parents
cannot be trusted to educate the children of the land, and that expert
nurses and teachers ought to be employed. The socialist also thinks.
326 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
and sometimes speaks very bitterly, of those luxurious homes of people
who in the whirl of business and social frivolities accept the burdens of
parenthood with regret and pass on the tasks of education of their off-
spring to incompetent hirelings as quickly as possible. Thus at both
extremes of society the argument for abandoning the educational func-
tion of the family may seem plausible on superficial examination.
But many of us think that the better way would be to correct defects;
that those who are able to educate their young children should be con-
strained by public opinion and law to do so; that the ignorant and
untrained should be encouraged and helped to perform their social
task; and that nurture is as truly a social function of the family as
propagation.
There is an educational function for the family which cannot be
transferred to the public school, the kindergarten, or the church school.
Much of the early and most important factors of education are insepara-
bly connected with that care of the infant body which only mothers can
give. The more formal, systematic, and specialized instruction, of com-
munication of knowledge, belongs to the school; but instruction is only
one element in the process of forming the character. The foundations
are laid before the child can safely be sent away from the parents, and
the co-operation of parental influence is necessary in every succeeding
stage of development up to maturity. Just what this peculiar and
essential contribution of the family is deserves profound study. We
can bring out the essential aspects by briefly considering (i) the aim of
education and (2) the particular contribution of the domestic life to
spiritual nurture.
III. The aim of religious and moral education is just the goal and
purpose of life, the crown of all culture. Jesus' saying is none too often
quoted: " I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly."
This aim is not to be attained in fragments and sections of unrelated
acts. The entire body, mind, and spirit is to be sanctified. Isolation
of interests is impossible.
There are three aspects of this aim of education, and they must be
seen stereoscopically, on all sides at once, as if character had three
dimensions; and these aspects are, (i) personality, (2) devotion to our
kind, and (3) consecration to God. Each involves the other.
We speak of the perfection of personality as our aim ; but we do not
mean a fixed limit, a fine quality of dwarfed proportions, and therefore
our sage Emerson preferred the word " greatness " as the ideal of
personal culture. Personality is not the equivalent of egotism. The
person must be a " socius," a companion, a member of the race, of kin
THE PART OF THE HOME IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 327
to his kind, a neighbor to all. For selfishness is the essence of sin, and it
cuts oflf all roots which might nourish the soul, and leaves it to wither.
Personality is still incomplete in the human community, and demands
converse with God. This divine and heavenly summit reached, the
Mont Blanc of the range of spiritual mountain heights, all lower ranges
of being and interests are seen radiant with the shining of God. "Virtue
is the gift of God."
IV. The family offers an indispensable contribution to the elementary
spiritual nurture, to right life.
I. Deeper and earher than clear, rational reasoning, there are expe-
riences which well up from the soul of the infant in response to the stimuli
of parental touch and care. Has ever any one described the very foun-
tain and origin of religious consciousness better than the good, gentle,
prophetic, awkward Pestalozzi?
"The best way for a child to learn to fear God is to see and hear a
real Christian. . . . The home is the true basis of the education of
humanity. It is the home that gives the best moral training, whether
for private or public life. . . .Once again I look into my ovm
heart for an answer to my question, and ask myself, How does the
idea of God take root in my soul? Whence comes it that I believe in
God, that I abandon myself to Him, and feel happy when I love Him
and trust Him, thank Him, and obey Him ?
" Then I soon see that the sentiments of love, trust, gratitude, and
obedience must first exist in my heart before I can feel them for God.
I must love men, trust them, thank them and obey them, before I can
rise to loving, thanking, trusting, and obeying God. ' For he who loveth
not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love his Father in
heaven whom he hath not seen ? ' I next ask myself, How is it that I
come to love men, to trust them, to thank them and obey them? How
do these sentiments take root in my heart? And I find that it is princi-
pally through the relations which exist between a mother and her infant
child.
" The mother must care for her child, feed it, protect it, amuse it. She
cannot do otherwise; her strongest instincts impel her to this course.
And so she provides for its needs, and in every possible way makes up
for its powerlessness. Thus the child is cared for and made happy, and
the first seed of love is soviTi within him."
Then he describes with some details the rise of trust, gratitude, and
obedience, the feeling and the ideas which correspond to them, and all in
response to the stimulus which arises in the relation of child to mother.
" These elements are also the elements of religious development, and it
328 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
is by faith in its mother that the child rises to faith in God. " The
child, no sooner hears God's name from his mother's lips than he glows
with gladness. " This first attempt of a loving, simple-minded mother
to subordinate the child's growing feeling of independence to faith in
God, by connecting faith with certain moral tendencies that are already
more or less developed, furnishes education with the fundamental prin-
ciples from which it must start, if it is to succeed in ennobling men."
2. Habits are the means by which actions, movements, are trans-
formed into second nature, the basis of character; and habits are started
at birth, continue through childhood and youth into manhood. Punctu-
ality, truthfulness, order, neatness, cleanliness, kindness, usefulness,
reverence, and all else that is desirable in character, are fashioned by
securing the almost unthinking repetition of right actions and of sym-
bolic gestures and postures.
3. The ideas of morality and religion are the late and ripe fruit of
feeling and habitual conduct. There is, of course, an intellectual
element in the first conscious movements, sensations, and emotions, but
only with youth can there come an orderly and extended system of
thoughts. Truth can be gradually formulated on the basis of previous
experiences. When doctrine is made clear, articulate, distinct, rational,
it reacts upon the life of feeling and volition and habit. If the doctrine,
happily, is a worthy conception of God, it helps the moral life, clarifies,
enlarges, exalts, refines the disposition. It is not enough to set an
example of goodness before a child, nor even to cause him to do good
actions himself; he must have a name for his vague experiences, must
voice his aspiration, must give a rational and even aesthetic form to his
devoutness. It is not a creed or a catechism which hurts the child's
soul, but the monstrous and immoral dogma and the inquisitional tor-
ture which stir revolt', and the unreality of verbal formulas which signify
nothing, and cause insincerity at once and skepticism in after years.
V. There is time for only one application of these considerations, and
that shall be to family worship. Domestic religion must find some kind
of suitable liturgical expression. Family worship, to be useful, or even
tolerable, must grow naturally out of the ordinary course of life, be fitted
into it, and reveal its real spirit. It must be for children, where there
are children; and they must, during the years of education, be active in
it, not merely passive victims of it. It must not frighten them away
from God's altar, where even birds make their nests in security. It
must be expansive and not repressive.
How simple and natural was the act in which Jesus instituted the
Eucharist. " And as they were eating, he took bread, and when he had
THE PART OF THE HOME IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 329
blessed, he brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take ye: this is my
body. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave to
them: and they all drank of it. And he said unto them. This is my
blood of the covenant, which is shed for many. And when they had
simg a hymn, they went out." No child would desire to run away from
that dramatized prayer. The story is ineffably sweet. The Master
who taught little children to regard themselves as his own by taking
them into his gentle and affectionate embrace, is always ready to use
physical symbols to help those who live in the flesh to press their way by
tangible and visible means into the mean'ng of the divine word. Why
should the members of a family retire from the table to proceed in stately
order to a service which is cut off from the happiness, comfort, laughter,
and joy of the natural melting of all ? AVhy should they turn their backs
on each other when the Giver of all good is addressed ? Why should
not the children themselves seek out and bring to that place the finest
expressions of adoration and gratitude which literature can furnish?
Many a wise mother has learned by holy instinct that it is a sacred
privilege to connect the brief phrase of hope and trust with the evening
caress and the delicious revery of a child falling asleep. Too often the
formal family worship is torture, and its words but vain repetitions, the
tone neither of earth nor heaven. The voice is that of an actor, and
reality has gone out of it.
If the children are studying German at school, they might well repeat
the touching sentence which reminds one of Fra Angelico's Pilgrim
Christ :
Komm, Herr Jesu, sei unser Gast,
Und segne was Du uns bescheret hast.
(Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest,
And bless what Thou hast given us.)
The home ever remains the primary temple, and the light of worship
on that altar must not go out, lest the world grow dark. Worship should
be a natural, sincere, and joyous part of a great life of love, order, beauty,
wisdom, and happiness; the children should be active agents in its
observance; and its ritual should be symbols taken from the ordinary
acts of familiar life, as Jesus made of the common meal, the lasting
memorial of himself and the central mystery of the Christian Church.
" In liberty of holy glee,
Accept thy childhood's part,
And thou shalt find, by faith enshrined,
The Father in thy heart. "
HOW CAN WE DEVELOP A GROWING CONSCIOUSNESS OF
GOD IN CHILDREN AND YOUTH?
MISS ALICE E. FITTS
PRATT INSTITUTE, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
" Enlarge our capacities to understand and our hearts to receive the
fulness of His life."
Consciousness of God must come to each one of us in some form of
experience; we know only what we have experienced of the spiritual
life. To satisfy the desire of the soul, to know God, and to lead the
individual through every experience to God, may be the inspiring task
of those who have children to nurture. Learning about God, going to
Sunday school or church, is not enough. What we must have is a
preparation for this, and the preparation must come to us as children.
As the blossom depends upon the growth of the plant, and this upon
the germination of the seed, so later spiritual life in man depends upon
the awakening and development of the spiritual germs in the soul.
What is to develop must begin, and we must not look to a later stage
to accomplish the work of an earlier one.
Some one has asked, " When shall I begin to teach my little child
to pray?" I cannot answer this question; the answer will come in its
own good time. It depends upon the mother. Prayer is not some-
thing separate from living; when the baby was put to sleep, he was
laid down with a prayer to God; when he was taken up, awake, per-
haps the mother spoke to God again. I do not know how often she
prays; the time comes when the child notices that she prays and he
imitates her. Then words may be given him to say. After a time he
adds his own petition, or gives thanks and learns to talk to his Father
in heaven. By and by he asks her why she prays, and she answers,
" To thank our heavenly Father for what He has given us; to ask Him
to take care of us and help us to do right." None of this he under-
stands as we do, or as he will later, but this exchange of feeling within
his little breast, the talking to God and expectation of an answer, form
the basis for all after-relationship between himself and God. And yet,
after all, the real value of this depends upon the spiritual life of the
mother and her insight.
During this time, when the child is learning what prayer means,
he is gaining other ideas, — of mysterious things, like the wind, that
he can feel but cannot see; of the light, which he can see but cannot
33°
CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD IN CHILDREN AND YOUTH 331
touch; of the voice, which he can hear but cannot see or touch; and
a sense of the hidden life in things comes to him. He talks to the
flowers, the wind, the moon; to all things he feels akin, and it is but a
step farther to this mysterious personality, God. Experience of the
invisible the mother gives quite early to her child; for instance, when
he begins to notice objects moved by the wind. He imitates these
moving things, and, watching them, asks what makes the things go.
" The wind," answers his mother; " listen, hear it talking to the trees,
the clothes on the line, and to the weather-vane. It says, ' Turn,' to the
little weathercock, and around goes the cock. Baby, show how the
weather-cock turns," and quickly he turns his little hand. From this
beginning he learns to notice all the things the invisible wind does,
and many questions follow from the child, which cannot all be answered,
but which lead back to the one Power behind that moves many things.
In the bird's nest, children see mirrored the human relationship of
the family, and here may be stirred the feelings of nurture, care, love,
protection, as they watch and hear about the mother and father birds
and all their efforts to protect and bring up their little ones.
All the sympathy with right action comes in the early years of the
child's hfe. Play and story, picture and song, all are helps to the
mother, but within her heart lies the God-wisdom implanted there as
an instinct, that helps her to be the artist in her work of lovingly, play-
fully awakening and developing the germs of spiritual life in her child.
For spiritual life is not separate from other life. It is every-day life
with a different content and aim. To keep this consciousness, to
deepen and enrich it, and prepare for further development and welcome,
the presence of a Power " that for existence strives," — this is our life-
work here.
One turns instinctively to the home to find right conditions for the
nurture of the spiritual life; and yet these conditions are not always
there. Even where ideals and aims are right, there is sometimes a
lack of insight in showing the way, and direct teaching of abstract
truths is depended upon to bring about spiritual development, or else
the responsibility is thrown off a'together or placed upon church or
Simday school. Quoting from Froebel, " Parents should not be timid,
shouM not object that they know nothing themselves, and do not know
how to teach their children. Their ignorance is not the greatest evil.
If they desire to know something, let them imitate the child's example,
let them become children with the child, learners with the learner. Let
them go to and be taught by Mother Nature and by the fatherly Spirit
of God. The Spirit of God and nature will guide them."
332 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
The mother indeed is the nurturer, the home-maker, and the atmos-
phere of the home. But it is not upon her alone that we must depend.
The father has his part to do. The united work of the two is the im-
portant thing. That they unite to live, to deal with the problems of
life, to nurture and train their children, is the great and important thing.
No family is free until all its members are free. No individual is really
happy unless the others are happy. We are constrained by the family,
and there is a constant opportunity to exercise the virtues that may
arise through individual coming in contact with individual. Just as
the man depends upon the child, so state and church depend upon the
family. Lift its roof, broaden its expanse, and the home becomes
the church. The home relationships interpret our Father in heaven
and the individual's nurturing power points the way for His work upon
earth. Within the family lives the individual. He may be regarded
as an individual, with individual rights; and he may be regarded as a
member of the whole, with duties bom of the relationship.
Two aspects of this life come before us, — the nurture of his feelings
and right direction for his activities. The Christian mother instinc-
tively helps her child to loving action. She does this unconsciously,
for love fills her heart. Just in proportion as the love of God fills her
heart, does she have the wisdom to lead her child aright. Happiness
is one of the necessary conditions of the child's life, and this comes
not alone through others but through himself and his right deeds.
This he soon discovers and here we may find the basis for the individ-
ual relationship to mother, father, brother and sister, and God. The
struggle with the self and its final victory can only be attained through
a conscious determination to do right, and a constant close relation-
ship to parents and then God, to help strengthen the will and resolve.
It is the old, old struggle of man with himself. At first the difficulty
is referred to outside things, and the real help given by mother or fa-
ther is the reference to self. Better that the discovery that the root
of the trouble lies within himself should come early. Mother's
help is needed first, then brothers' or sisters', and finally God's. The
struggle to reconcile what the inner man says is right with his deeds
must finally end in a realization of his responsibility for his own actions.
To find the reason for his own action within himself, is another start-
ing-point for his relationship to God. Here is not only a test for the
child, but a test for parents as well. Who is willing to stand, and stand
firmly, lovingly, for the law? The law, not arbitrary and for the
individual, but for the right? The law which, when once obeyed by
the child, will show him the way to govern himself. No kindness so
CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD IN CHILDREN AND YOUTH 333
great, no love so real as that which intelligently leads the child to obe-
dience of law. From this is born trust and faith, and ability to enter
into the Uves and difficulties of his fellow -men. It is the open door
for all wider and higher life. To will the will of God, — this is real
union with God, and while, step by step, we depend upon love, the
individual must make his choice, or he will not be free.
The development of the individual child's feeling for God, know-
ing about God and consciousness of God, begin with the mother, —
the will of the individual conflicting with that of the mother. To
awaken and develop the will to do right, this is her aim. To help the
child to choose the right and will it, this is gain indeed. For mother
first, for right, second; infinite love and patience are needed to
develop this. Obedience lays the foundations for faith and many
other virtues, but pre-eminently faith. We cannot always know, but
we can obey and believe; the act of faith makes possible all things.
The religious experiences of children differ as widely as those of
grown people. When the first conscious experience comes of right
conquering the wrong condition within, we do not know. What the
motives are for action we cannot always tell; but recognition, on the part
of parent or teacher, of right intentions goes a long way toward help-
ing right to reign. Happiness should follow every step that is con-
quered. The voice within the heart of the child should speak in com-
mendation as well as condemnation. Conscience has not a negative
voice alone but a positive one as well. And the individual should be
welcomed back in to the life of the family, from which he may have been
temporarily separated. From every deed in life there is a way to God.
In the family circle may come times set apart by the parents to be
with their children. At meals, of course, some one says; but this is
one of our modem problems, with father away all day and dinner late
at night. The mother may gather her children together for talks and
stories or singing before supper. In the dusk, many confidences are
exchanged and many little hearts are opened. The stories mother
tells sink deep into the memory. The poems she recites or sings are
always with us. What a golden opportunity for the father if he can
reach home early enough to unite in this! He may live over again his
boyhood, and thus better understand his own son. He has a chance
to review some of the stories he loved, and tell of his own deeds of
prowess. When will he ever have a more sympathetic audience than this
one, or one that will believe him to be more of a hero ? In living with
our children we are enabled to go over again our incomplete educa-
tion, pick up the lost stitches, and make of it a continuous whole. Then
334 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
at bedtime, before the children sleep, the mother may say their prayers
with them and hear the confessions and explanations that often come
at this time. A comforting or discriminating word dropped into the
mind just here sinks deep and does its work of miiting mother and
child in their efforts to do right. Music is a power for good. What
mother and father sing or play carries great influence.
Another way for love to express itself is in giving opportunities
for service; the right direction for the increasing bodily activity and
strength. Hard things to do, when conquered, lead to union between
parents and children. The parents should see to it that their attitude
toward work is a noble one, toward the worker, a respectful one, and
the child will desire to work too. This is the first step toward creative
work. The feeling that father, mother, and children are united in their
lives and with God gives them the basis for true spiritual living.
I hesitate to touch on the one subject that is of most importance, for
fear I shall be misunderstood. Christ is the great reconciling force
of the world. As we exercise this reconciling activity ourselves, we
become conscious of God. The child must be led to discover this as
a law in nature, in stories, in literature, in the Bible, in heroes, and
in the person of Jesus Christ. The conflicting elements in life must
be reconciled even for little children.
The harmony of nature, of the mother, of the home, all help the
chi'd to find harmony within himself, but his relationship to Christ
becomes a conscious one when he begins to understand his need for
living the life of reconciliation. God is throughout the universe, filling,
pervading it with life and love; we are His children; part of His infi-
nite nature is giving us life. Our life, our happiness, is in opening our
hearts for more and more of this consciousness. We are both finite
and infinite, in the sense that we have both a human and a divine inheri-
tance. Out of the human, we may lift the divine. Spiritual life is
not a thing apart; it is possible here, if we have but a heavenly aim.
What keeps us so far away from God? Is it worldly ideals mixed in
with spiritual aims, that we cannot find our way from every point in
life to God ? Can we not live so in the unity of life that our children
may be brought in as well? Can we not keep their confidence and
respect as they grow older, through together striving to live the highest
life? Steps in attainment are for us all. We are all endeavoring to
do right, parents, teachers, and children, and sometimes we fail. We
can all, fathers, mothers, and children, know and love God, our Father,
with a growing understanding and confidence, and this love must
finally pass out from the home into the community and make way
for a still deeper experience of God's spirit.
THE CONTINUITY OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
MRS. WILLIAM D. MacCLINTOCK
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
The doctrine of periods distinct and definable in a child's growth
is, of course, old, and has been always practically operative in educa-
tion. Indeed, nature has written it so large in the facts of his physical
growth that it could not be ignored. But the modern psychology of
childhood, confirming and sanctioning the doctrine, and freeing it
largely from vagueness, has so deepened and widened its influence
in the educational theory and practice of our day, that we feel,almost
as if it were a new discovery. The full recognition in the child's whole
training of this doctrine and its far-reaching implications works many
most beneficent results. One of these implications is that we must
seek subjects and aspects of subjects adapted to the period of growth
within which we find our child; further, that in presenting to him
subjects and aspects of subjects for which he has no apperception,
we are either wasting our time since they fail to become reality to
him at all, or if by ill luck he does grasp them, we have done the greater
wrong of forcing his season of readiness, and have contributed toward
producing that most tragic object — a premature child.
On no side of a child's training do we need so much the light of
this principle of fitness as upon the side of religion. By a combina-
tion of causes not difficult to trace, it has come about that Christianity,
and Protestant Christianity in especial, has developed a system of
religious teaching that confronts the child with a material and a
method which disregard every requirement of fitness. This system
draws its whole material from books, not from the actual world, from
books which record an alien ethnic experience, the experience of a
peculiarly imchildlike race at a very developed stage of its existence.
This system has frozen at its source every impulse toward the making
of new spontaneous myth. It has used the old myth as if it were history.
It has refused the aid of new concrete symbols, and has interpreted
into abstractions the old symbols. It has imposed upon the child a
ready-made code of adult morals, and has expected from him the
response of adult emotions and mature conduct. Therefore the new
light that we are getting from psychology and pedagogy which helps
the religious educator to find material fit at each stage of his child's
growth, and enables him to discriminate with some certainty the hour
335
336 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
of the child's ripeness, has set us immensely forward on the road tow-
ard a sane and effective rehgious education. But the very fact that
there is so much of truth and helpfulness in the theory of the periodic
character of the child's development tempts us, as always in the case
of a satisfying and solving theory, to overemphasize and overwork it.
Indeed, the psychologists themselves, in their apparent pre-occupation
with the explaining power of the doctrine of periods, have opened the
door to mistakes on the part of those applying the theory. The first
mistake to which the practical teacher and lay parent is liable is that
of trusting too much to the belief that one's attitude toward the child
may safely be one of complete laissez-faire; that the qualities and charac-
teristics appropriate to the child at each stage of his growth appear of
themselves and take care of themselves; so that there is some danger
that the old meddling, nagging form of bad education may be re-
placed by the other bad form of indifferentism, growing out of our
confidence in the power of the child's new period to redress the balance
automatically.
Another danger arising out of the same doctrine comes with the
point of view that these periods in a child's life are isolated, detached;
that there is a sort of gap or chasm between the periods, on one side
of which a child is a different sort of being from what he is on the
other side. This point of view, if not encouraged by recent popular
studies of certain periods of experience, such as adolescence, is at
least not sufficiently guarded against. Now, to lose sight of the fact
that the human personality is one thing, evolving slowly and contin-
uously through all its periods and experiences, is to cut the nerve of
education. It is gradually, by imperceptible degrees, that the nor-
mal child passes, or should pass, from period to period in his growth;
and it is the part of wise teachers and parents to see to it that his evo-
lution from stage to stage is without shock or jar. It is no more impera-
tive to select his educational material to fit the period he is in, than to
plan that it may lead naturally and smoothly to the material he will
use in his coming period.
On the side of his religious training we should provide with sacred
care for this safe, harmonious, continuous development. The fact
that we have not hitherto done this accounts for many of the unfortu-
nate conditions in the religious world. Children have been thrust
prematurely into a world of objects and ideas which took on no value,
no aspect of reahty for them. From such a basis the soul's progress
is almost necessarily backward. Much of its future history is
necessarily negative, denying what it never should have been taught,
THE CONTINUITY OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 337
correcting points of view that could just as easily have been correct
to begin with.
Now, in attempting to provide our children against such disloca-
tions in their religious experience, it is a safe principle to agree upon,
that they shall have as little as possible to unlearn as they go on. This
would seem to suggest these things: That we learn and take to heart
the pedagogical principle applied elsewhere in education, and begin
by giving our children the large, simple primitive things of rehgion,
rather than the specific details of a very late stage of rehgious
culture. Surely, we are all more than ready to acknowledge that
religion is not a matter of a knowledge of facts, not a matter of a
specific record in a given book, not a matter of worship or ceremonial,
but a spirit, a vision, a way of looking at hfe and the world. What
is it other than an attitude of reverence and acquiescence, and later
the consciousness of a guiding immanent spirit in life and the world ?
What, then, are the facts of Hfe, what are the phenomena of the world
by which we can lead a child toward these things? These we will
choose whether we find them in the Hebrew Bible, in the records of
other races, in the seasons, the weather, the mill, the grocery, the slice
of bread and butter, the ant-hill, the rose-tree. Whichever of them we
use, they will all yield the lesson of reverence and acquiescence, — of
a sense of the immanent guiding, interlinking Spirit, the Father of life.
These are the simple but profound things of religion at which we aim
in the religious training of the young child. Into this framework of
the largest fundamental things, all details, and all the soul's later ex-
periences, will fit. There is nothing here to unlearn.
Doctrines and systems are not for the child, but the large and simple
spirit underlying these and all other systems is what, for the sake of his
later harmonious development, we should give him.
That the child may have as Httle as possible to unlearn or correct,
it is necessary that he be dealt with quite frankly in the things he is
taught. Let the materia^ chosen for his training be fitted for his stage
of development, so that he may safely go completely to the bottom of
it. It is, of course, not wise in teaching material from the Bible, for
example, to try to put the child in possession of the conclusions of
modern scholarly criticism. But the teacher who knows these con-
clusions is under obligation to teach in the light of them.
A part of this complete frankness and honesty in teaching the child
should be the teacher's endeavor (be he preacher, parent, or instructor)
to get at the essence, the spirit, of the thing he is handling, and put the
emphasis upon that. Who will calculate the amount of suffering the
338 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
world has known on account of dogma, doctrines, and even creeds
erected upon a mere figure of speech or some unessential detail of a
teaching? A little girl I know was firmly convinced that sparrows
are the only birds God counts, and that robins and sea-gulls drop out
quite unnoticed; and one would not be at all surprised to find some-
where in the world a genuine credo built upon the market price of
those same elect sparrows. Your own experience will tell you that
it has been the shaking off of such accidental, and after all unessential,
attachments to your faith that has cost you most sorrow and that has
been at the bottom of most of your religious disturbances. If we
crave for our children a harmonious, affirmatively evolving experience
in religion, we will take care to lighten the weight of emphasis on the
acc'dental and superficial, and lay it on the deeper essential meaning
of th ngs.
A plea for the quiet, unbroken continuity of religious teaching and
experience should by no means lose sight of the possibility, nay, the fact,
of times of acceleration and deepening. Indeed, one must provide
for and expect more than one such time in a child's life, as he expects
and cultivates such hours in his own later experience, if he be spirit-
ually alive. But these special periods are most effective and most
fruitful when they emerge from a background of steady, wise training.
There is another and equally important sense in which we may
conserve the continuity of the child's religious growth. His experience
from period to period we may call a perpendicular continuity. There
is also a horizontal continuity for which we are to care. Noth'ng
more beneficent has come into modem education than the teaching
that a child's experience is all one; that it is all educational and should
be all unified and harmonized. We have learned to see that ideally
his life in the home is as educational as his life in the school, his life
in school as social and humanistic as his life in the home. So we should
be prepared to see that religion and religious teaching is not- a thing
apart, relegated to Sunday, the church, and the Sunday school, or
even to specific hours in the home; but that it is a spirit, an atmos-
phere, a point of view, an explanation of things, a motive for conduct,
— all these and many more things — and that it diffuses itself through
all life and all objects. Quietly and unobtrusively, joyously and en-
thusiastically, the child may be led to see in his whole hfe and any
detail of his life, reasons for that reverence and acquiescence which pre-
pares him to see,
"A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."
THE GROWTH OF THE LARGER SENSE OF SOCIAL
AND CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY IN YOUTH
PROFESSOR EDWIN D. STARBUCK, Ph.D.
EARLHAM COLLEGE, RICHMOND, INDIANA
The one point that I have to set forth is that the home should be a
commvinity. The community spirit should pervade it. It should
reflect, in a small way, to be sure, but in a very real way, the larger
industrial, civic, and social life into which the young man and woman
are later to be thrown, the preparation for which it is the highest func-
tion of the home to furnish. The chances are that the full-grown man
is going to be just such a person as his own childhood and youth pro-
phesy. The notion is being forced in upon us in many ways now-a-
days that the foundations of character and personality are being laid
in the very early years of life. And to the extent to which we believe
it, the idea is clear and insistent that the home life is the crucial point
in society. If this department of the Religious Education Associa-
tion can materially aflFect the spirit and organization of the homes of
the country for the better, it will have a longer leverage upon the quality
of our social and civic life than can be measured by any external stan-
dards.
Even when the family consists of two, the husband and wife, the
community spirit should prevail. There is an old, old custom, bred in
the days of strife and combat, that the husband should wield the scep-
ter in the household. In these days, when the humanizing and spirit-
ualizing elements of our nature are coming to count for as much as
those of the strenuous life, there is little excuse for the maintenance
of the custom. The obedience clause in the marriage ceremony is
happily dropping away, and husbands are becoming domesticated
and civilized. A completely mutual life is desirable, not simply for
the enjoyment of the two, but on account of the children who are later
coming into the home. An attempt to develop a community spirit
among children, when it does not exist already in the family, which is
the fountain-head of their impulses and ideals, would be a bubble.
What the parents profess may count for something, but what they
feel and live counts for indefinitely more. That which children find
in the very atmosphere of the home is what they imbibe. The per-
vading spirit of the home is getting in its most telling work during the
days while the children are in the mother's arms, on her lap, and about
339
340 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
her knees. There is nothing so catching as the contagion of moods
and impulses; and it is our stock of instincts and impulses and moods
that determines what each of us will do and love and live for, and
not so much what we think out in later years.
A second consideration in making the home a community is that
of numbers. For the community life of the home to reflect the social
whole at all adequately, and develop the children on many sides, it
should consist of several members. The fact that an only child in a
family is likely to be selfish and socially deformed is proverbial; and
Dr. Bohannon's study of the question has massed the evidences that
such is the case. This need not be true, if parents were prudent in
their training, and unselfish in their love for the solitary prodigy;
but who can be prudent under such circumstances ? The best protec-
tion against the danger where the providence of nature sends only one
or two children into the family, is in increasing the number by adop-
tion. It is a good omen that so many home finding societies are
springing up and doing a flourishing business. The objection to adopt-
ing children is, to the minds of many persons, the number of instances
in which it has failed to produce happy results. The reply is two-
fold. In the first place, disappointments rarely occur when children
are adopted in the earliest days of babyhood. Rather than wait to
find how the child is going to turn out, before receiving it, it is better
to begin preforming and shaping its life, by surrounding it with pure
social atmosphere to breathe, and the best spiritual food to grow by.
Then, again, it is an unkindness, if not a crime, to adopt a child into
a household from a mere sense of duty. Unless the love-life can pre-
dominate in the act, and jealousy, favoritism, pride in descent, and all
other forms of selfishness can be overcome, the orphan child, as well
as the small home circle, are better off without the union.
We can hardly afford to sacrifice the ruggedness, the fine self-con-
trol, and the social responsiveness that develop naturally in the midst
of the group, even at the risk of a certain amount of contamination
from children supposedly less immaculate than our own. It is in the
social group, by actually facing for themselves the difficult situations
that arise, that character is formed. What the child can do, the re-
sults that he can achieve among his fellows, is the measure of his will,
and the tension and quality of his will is the measure to himself of his
own personality. It is in the social group, and there only, as James
Mark Baldwin has so well pointed out, in the actual demands that
others are making upon him, that the child forms any adequately vivid
and comprehensive social feeling. With parents that are authorita-
SOCIAL AND CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY IN YOUTH 341
tive and yet companionable, with a group of other children about him,
differing in age, tastes, and temperament, and with these" supplemented
by dolls and pets that want protection and care, there is scarcely a
latent power in his nature that is not daily stimulated. And he is
being taught the lessons he needs to learn for citizenship. When pas-
sionate, he leams self-control; when selfish, he has a quick and sure
harvest of unhappiness; when obstinate, he feels himself growing
aloof from his fellows. With all the knocks he is getting, and also
with the pleasures from intermingling, society becomes a reality to
him, and not a fine fancy. Its absolute demands on him, and his
responsibility to it, become real facts that he can no more gnore and
slight than he can the fact of his own being.
There is also fine training for citizenship in the complexity of the
situations children must face in the family group. There is hardly
a moment of their waking life in which there does not arise diversity
of wishes and a complication of rights to which each must adjust him-
self. The socially unfit are those who fail in adjustment, just as the
socially and political successful are those who can respond in a large
way to a large number of persons. With an only child in the family,
the complex situations hardly arise, and with two children they are too
infrequent and too easy of solution. Real training for life consists in
tactful adjustment almost instantaneously to that indefinable some-
thing called public sentiment; a fact so compHca'ed and intricate that
its elements cannot be weighed intellectually, but must be untangled
by a sort of refined sensitivity. It is no mere play on words to point
out, as John Dewey has done, the connection between responsiveness
and moral responsibility. Unless social responsiveness has become
fixed through long habituation, it is questionable whether the most
healthy social sense can ever arise.
In the matter of having the community spirit pervade the home, a
word is deserved about discipline. We, as Americans, are proverbially
lax in parental authority and the rigidness of our home discipline.
The distinction is our clear gain, if it means that a higher kind of
authority is prevailing in our homes than the imperiousness of our
Anglo-Saxon fathers. I trust it fits in among the many good fruits of
our democratic tree. Our professors are not so august, our preachers
not so terrible, our teachers not so awe-inspiring, nor is our obedience
so groveling as in other times and countries. And still our authority
and obedience, if we are to flourish, must be no less real. The one
indispensable thing in the relation of parents and children is companion-
ship. The natural fruits of autocracy, whether in Russia or in an
342 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
American home, are unhappiness, friction, waste, disobedience, and
underhandedness. There will come a time in each child's -life when
arbitrary authority must break down, if the boy is to become a strong
man. The occasion for a break should never arise. The youth's
independence is not something to give him out of hand when he reaches
the age of twenty-one, but a natural right, in the exercise of which he
should be schooled from earliest babyhood. The highest gift of a
parent is not freedom or wealth, but self-respect, love, good will, and
fellowship.
Companionship, responsiveness, and a strong spirit of love and de-
votion— these are the ends to be attained. The means toward them
consist chiefly in doing things together in the household. It is the
rule, not only outside the home, but within it, that the strongest attach-
ments spring up, and happiness abounds, when people are losing them-
selves in a common task. When people have honestly worked together,
succeeded and failed together, laughed and sighed together, nothing
can separate them. What I have to say about the common occupations
of the home must be confined, for the most part, to those which cen-
ter around the property rights and property sense. I am concerned
with this, because it is fundamental, and also because it is much over-
looked. While I do not believe in communism as a social doctrine
for all, I do believe in a modified form of communism in the family.
The entire family, children and all, should have a common purse, and
should consult together, as far as possible, on all interests, plans, pro-
jects, and investments. I have seen something like this in operation
in one family, and certainly to the happiness and profit of all
concerned.
I imagine you asking. How can a child enter into the complexities
of modern life, and the intricacies of modern enterprises? The high
degree of organization that has set in is all the more reason for under-
taking such a plan, if only it is the children and the home life we are
considering. As the situation now stands, it has grown far beyond
their comprehension. There was a time when the raising and making,
the bartering, buying and selling, the planning and using, were all
going on in open view to the children. Now the father hiurries away
in the morning, and practically all his waking life is a closed book to
wife and children. The integrity of the home is weakened by so
much, — the home, which must remain, if our national life is to be
healthy, the nursery, not only of the bodies of children, but of every-
thing that pertains to their adult life as well. Hence, I am inclined
to beheve that communism in the home is not only important for the
SOCIAL AND CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY IN YOUTH 343
happiness of the family circle in furnishing a tangible incentive to their
common life, and for leading them easily and naturally into the things
they need to know and do, but also for the sake of the unity and in-
tegrity of society itself.
A common purse, ledger, and property might be a good thing for
the independent and self-sufficient father too, and for his business.
This needs no higher sanction than that it is in line with the policy of
the President in dealing with trusts. If a half-dozen pairs of innocent
eyes are to look into the man's accounts, and as many hearts not yet
hardened to the tricks of trade are to adjudge his deals, it would some-
times influence the character of his transactions. It would often affect
the nature of his purchases. He would hardly enter so freely items
for drinks, knick-knacks, clubs, and other forms of selfishness.
Along with the common purse and ledger should go, of course, the
separate ones of each. Children should be paid for special services;
should have their separate tasks, rooms, and occupations; should have
their own patch of ground, or little enterprises, and learn to produce
and see the fruit of their own skill and ingenuity. It is a mistake to
suppose that a social sense can grow up apart from a fair recognition
of personal worth and personal rights. In the highest ethics there is a
fine equilibrium, or rather a perfect blending of the self, on the one
hand, and all the rest, on the other. The self is the measure of love
in the golden rule and in the second commandment. The two things
must develop together.
In many ways the lines of responsiveness should extend beyond
the family group. A family that exists for itself alone is as selfish as
a person with the same ideals. The final center of interest is in the
social group, and not in the family. As children come along in years,
the parents may encourage the cliques, teams, games, societies, and
social events that bring the children into larger social groups. With
books, magazines, newspapers, discussions in the family of the move-
ments of the times in politics, industry, religion, and art, the interests
should be rapidly forming which lead children to feel themselves a
part of a larger social order; so that when the days come for them to
drift away from the home circle into the social group, they may be
in it and of it as naturally as they came into the mother's arms who
first received them.
PLANS FOR THE WORK OF THE HOME DEPARTMENT
FOR THE COMING YEAR
MRS. ANDREW MacLEISH
GLENCOE, ILLINOIS
The plan of this department contemplates work which will stimu-
late and encourage religious home life and training. It proposes, first,
to reduce to a simple and easily intelligible form the principles that
underlie the kindergarten. Froebel's insight into child-nature, and
his philosophy of life are most helpful to parents, but his style is so
obscure that he cannot be apprehended without earnest study. The
committee of the Home Department, therefore, purpose enlistmg the
services of students of Froebel in the cause of simplifying and widely
extending his teachings.
Their second line of work will be in the direction of opening to
parents, and stimulating them to use, opportunities for studying the
Bible from what may be called, for want of a better term, the mod-
ern point of view. The Executive Committee of the Home Depart-
ment feel it to be very important that the work of religious training
and instruction should not be taken from the home and delegated en-
tirely to other organizations, as the church and Sunday school. Par-
ents are the rightful religious instructors of their children, but, in
view of the great changes that are taking place just now in the outer
forms of religious faith, and in the understanding of the Bible, they
need to familiarize themselves with the results of modern scholarship,
that they may be able to present a rational conception of religious
truth, and one that will meet the needs of the coming generation.
As their third line of effort, the department propose to undertake
a study of the present status of family worship. By means of a ques-
tionnaire widely distributed, they will gather together all the facts pos-
sible, with suggestions as to method and character of the service, and
ways of adapting it to the conditions of modem life. It is hoped
that a helpful and suggestive report may be possible, as a result of
this investigation.
344
XI 11. LIBRARIES
ANNUAL SURVEY OF THE RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL
WORK OF LIBRARIES
DREW B. HALL
LIBRARIAN MILLICENT LIBRARY, FAIRHAVEN, MASSACHUSETTS
The public library is an educational institution. If it is to pro-
vide religious literature and to succor the religious worker, three con-
ditions must be met: i. The Hbrary must have the disposition, and
the ability on the part of its staff, to look after the religious needs of
its community; for this work it will find groups and organizations
already formed in the church societies and Sunday schools. 2. These
societies must be ahve and ready to seek and to receive the library's
ad. 3. The library must contain, and keep up to date, a collection of
religious hterature, suitable for the use of both laymen and clergy-
men, and of all divisions and sects of the church.
Last year the annual survey took the form of an inquiry into the
first and second conditions and it revealed, in general, a greater readi-
ness on the part of the libraries to give aid, than on the part of church
organizations to receive it.
This year the survey is concerned with the third condition — that of
material equipment. To discover what resources public libraries have
to offer the student of the Bible and of general religious questions,
and more definitely than has heretofore been done, what use is made
of them, the following questions as to volumes and circulation were
addressed to a considerable number of large town and city public
libraries:
1 . Do church societies habitually notify you of their topics of study,
and use special reserved lists on them?
2. The total number of volumes in your library?
3. Among these, how many are classed as religious?
4. How many of these "religious volumes" are less than twenty-
five years old?
5. Total volumes of all classes added in your last fiscal year.
6. The number of these classed as religious.
7. The total circulation last year.
8. The circulation of religious books.
9. Additional facts and figures of interest in this connection?
345
346 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
All almost unqualified negative, in answer to the first query, sup-
ports last year's report.
From the next two questions, as to total volumes and those classed
as religious, the percentage of religious works varies from 2.23 per
cent in a town of 12,000 inhabitants within twelve miles of Boston,
and 2.4 per cent in a city of 23,000 in central New York, to 13 per
cent for a district library in Maryland. The average, however, is 4.2
per cent, to which nine-tenths of the libraries closely approximate.
Further, the average of careful estimates (not entirely reliable as statis-
tics, but the best figures obtainable) of the volumes less than twenty-
five years old is only 2.5 per cent.
Comparisons with three careful and inclusive bibliographical state-
ments, the A. L. A. catalogue, Sonnenschein's best books and its sup-
plement, and the Publishers' Weekly tables, of the annual book-pro-
duction of the United States and England, are interesting.
The percentage of rehgious entries in the A. L. A. catalogue, of 1893
is 4, and in last year's edition, 4.2 per cent. This coincidence, with
the actual percentage in working libraries, seems to indicate either
that the editors of the catalogues kept remarkably close to present con-
ditions, or that 4 per cent is the natural, predestined proportion of
religious to non-religious works. On the other hand, Mr. Sonnen-
schein considers that of publications worthy of note and entry in his
bibliographies, theology, including all religious topics, comprises about
12 per cent; three times the number in our collections.
The third means of comparison is the annual report of publica-
tions in this country and England. These reports are especially of
interest in connection with the returns from my fifth and sixth in-
quiries as to total accessions and the number classed as religious.
These returns give 2.8 as the average percentage of religious works
added in the last fiscal year. Among individual libraries, 9 per cent
in a city of central New York is at one extreme, and .6 (sx-tenths)
of one per cent in a town not ten miles from Boston at the other, neither
institution being one of those previously instanced, and each
reporting as religious 3.5 per cent of their total collection. That is,
libraries containing 4.2 per cent religion are at present adding 2.8 per
cent yearly, presumably mostly new publications. In 1902, the Pub-
lishers' Weekly recorded 7,833 volumes, and of these, 639, or 8 per cent,
were religious; in 1903, out of 7,865, 513 volumes, or 6.5 per cent,
were religious, and in 1904, out of 8,300, 717 volumes, or 8.7 per cent.
If these figures seem small, it should be noted that fiction, heading
the list with 22 per cent, is followed next by religion with its 8 per cent.
RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL WORK OF LIBRARIES 347
From these new religious publications, averaging 700 volumes, and
from the thousands of past years, libraries are annually obtaining 2.8
per cent of their accessions, which, among one thousand, means only
38. This argues either that all the churches and all the townspeople
are satisfied with 28 new volumes yearly on spiritual matters, or that
too often the pen of the religious author is that of the ready writer,
and his mind that of the sectarian and weakling, or that the libraries
are missing a great opportunity.
Replies to the seventh and eighth questions, concerning the home
use of these books, furnish additional information. In the libraries,
already considered, the circulation of religious books is .98 per cent
of the whole, ranging from .3 per cent to 2.4 per cent.
To recapitulate, pubhc libraries contain about one volume classed
in religion to every twenty-five in other classes, and one to forty less
than twenty-five years old; each year, out of every thousand volumes
of accessions, twenty-eight are religious, and the home use is less than
one hundredth; on an average, one sixty-fifth the circulation of fiction
and one-fourth that of literature.
For our encouragement, and especially for the encouragement of
those who feel that the time is ripe for a "general revival of religious
and moral education," and for a general return from these allied sub-
jects to the fundamental truths set forth in the Bible, there is, finally,
this report from a busy, prosperous city of two hundred thousand
inhabitants, a city whose moral character is commonly regarded to-
day much as of old was that of Sodom and Gomorrah: " We have been
purchasing more fully of religious works directly in response to a larger
call for these books on the part of readers. Much of this literature
has been in some way connected with, or the result of, modem Biblical
criticism. I am glad to say that there are several church societies,
etc., engaged in studying the Old or New Testaments in a scientific
manner."
I have come, during the preparation of this paper, to feel that
church societies and the clergy are not calling upon and using public
libraries as they well might, and especially that libraries, while meet-
ing gladly all who come for aid, have not the best possible equipment for
fostering "personal study on the part of parents and teachers," and that
they are not giving as much attention to the work of the church uni-
versal, buying eagerly the best, most popularly useful literature, as
they are warranted in doing by the ends to be gained and the supreme
importance of the subjects to be considered,
THE MORAL VALUE OF READING
WILLIAM I. FLETCHER
LIBRARIAN AMHERST COLLEGE, AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS
What I have to say on this subject has reference mainly to the
use and utiHties of the pubKc hbrary. The object of the pubhc library
is to place within the reach of the mass of the people the best books
in all the ranges of literature and knowledge, and not only so, but
also to exert some influence to induce the people to read these books.
That is to say, no one will regard it as an end worthy of the pubhc
and private outlay, which has been so lavishly expended on our 1 bra-
ries, that they shall hold and safely preserve the treasures of litera-
ture, if the commimity only receive the indirect benefit that may come
from the use of the books by their preachers, editors, and teachers,
and do not themselves, to any extent, read the books. And yet a
little examination into the matter wil bring out rather strikingly two
things: i. That only a small minority of the books are read; and
2. That only a small minority of the people read the library
books.
On one hand, we have on the library shelves, practically untouched,
rows upon rows of most excellent books. On the other, we have scores
and hundreds of families whose highest intellectual and social needs
those books would supply, remaining quite indifferent to them, and
entirely unrepresented among the library's patrons. There is, it must
be confessed, a very common apathetic indifference to the library,
and to good literature, on the part of the people of our towns and
cities, which is an evil as strenuously to be combatted as the evil of
the lack of books, where that exists. Certainly, our libraries ought to
reach with their influence many more of the people than they do.
That they may do so, requires a higher conception of what the value
of reading to the community is. If we look upon it as a matter of
dilettantism, especially if we share the subtle skepticism, which is so
prevalent, as to the capacity of the popular mind for culture, we shall
only half-heartedly enter into efforts to bring the books and the
people together. That we may have for ourselves, and for others,
higher ideals as to the use of books it is worth while to examine this
question of the moral value of reading. For, if we recognize in books
a power for the moral elevation of the people, and not merely for the
promotion of intelligence and of technical skill, we shall be prepared
348
THE MORAL VALUE OF READING 349
to enter into efforts for the greater efficiency of this agency with the
enthusiasm of a crusade.
A new era is undoubtedly dawn-ng in the management of our
libraries; an era of attractive interiors, helpful attendants, freedom in
the use of books, abolition of needless and irksome restraints, and,
beyond all, the actual carrying of books to the homes of the people,
especially through the school, and the familiarizing of school children
with good literature. Such an attitude, on the part of the library, as
this implies the truly missionary spirit, which must be essentially
moral, and recognize the benefits it seeks to confer as moral benefits,
and not merely economic or intellectual benefits, though it must be
confessed the lines here are hard to draw. Perhaps it is not neces-
sary that they should be drawn very closely.
Let us now inquire wherein lies the moral value of reading, — of
general or miscellaneous reading, we must be understood to mean. In
the first place, reading furnishes occupation for otherwise idle hours.
Speaking before the Boston Mercantile Library Association in 1850,
the late George S. Hillard said, "Occupation is the armor of the soul,
and the train of Idleness is borne up by all the vices."
Reading tends to elevate and refine conversation and social inter-
course. In my boyhood it was, for a time, my lot to work in the fields
with young farm-hands, and I always recall with a shudder the talk
with which they beguiled the time.
It is difficult for us who live in an atmosphere so charged, as is
ours, with intelligence and culture to realize what life is, where it is
narrowed down to the immediate interests and happenings of our own
lives and those immediately about us. We get a glimpse of the nar-
ro^vness and degradation of such a life in the accounts of the people
of the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee, to say nothing of the
"sweet Aubums" of our New England hills.
Carlyle said, " Do not books accomplish miracles, as runes were
fabled to do? They persuade men. Not the wretchedest circulating-
library novel, which foolish girls thumb and con in remote villages,
but will help to regulate the actual practical weddings and households
of those foolish girls." So, let us not fail to recognize the moral
value of romance reading in humanizing and refining the lives and
homes of our people, and preparing a soil for the seed of a better life.
And it has been remarked by some of our most experienced libra-
rians, among them the late Dr. Poole of Boston and Chicago, that
most readers, having formed a habit of reading, proceed to read a
better class of books than those which first allure and please them.
3SO THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
and that, in fact, they generally read books that are superior in their
general tone to their daily life and thought, and so are led on from
one stage to another. Certainly, this seems likely, for it would be a
poor sort of romance which did not present some ideals of heroism,
of devotion, of unselfishness, above the sordid lives which many lead.
However much force there may be in these observations, it is when
we pass to social and political developments under democracy that
the moral value of reading in the community becomes most strikingly
evident. The world over, the people are rapidly assuming the direc-
tion of affairs. In Russia, the power of czars and bureaus to suppress
them seems steadily weakening. In Germany, the popular element in
the government constantly gains in power.
Let us observe some of the ways in which reading may prepare
the people for the responsibility, thrown upon them by democracy.
The reading of history goes far' to teach the hoUowness of demagogic
pretensions, and to expose the falsity of the claims of novelty advanced
by this or that political creed or programme. The well-read citizen
knows that the same experiments have been tried before, and takes a
warning from the page of history. And in biography, which is his-
tory, plus personality, the citizen has the stimulus to virtuous conduct
in public life of the example of living men. Who can estimate what
has been done for the political education of our young voters by the
biographies of Booker Washington, Jacob A. Riis, Robert E. Lee,
John A. Andrew, Roger Wolcott, and others of these most recent,
to say nothing of those of Washington and Lincoln.
The reading of books of travels sober one's judgments by exhib-
iting the effects upon character of environment, in climate, in
geographic conditions, in forms of government, and teaches how
to m.ake due allowances in behalf of the strangers who come to us
from other shores; while travels in unexplored regions, towards the
north or south pole, or into the heart of Africa, by their display of
heroic qualities on the part of the explorer, kindle the latent heroism
of the reader, and prepare him to stand unflinchingly by a good
cause, through thick and thin. Can we tell what the world would be
without the example of a Sir John Franklin, a Dr. Kane, a Living-
stone, a Stanley ? names whose very mention makes our blood run
quick, and stirs us to emulate their heroism and fortitude.
Again, the books which make the mysteries and the marvels of
modern science the common property of all who read, who can meas-
ure their influence in the molding of character ? Not only the astron-
omer, if sane, must be devout and reverent, but he who catches a
THE MORAL VALUE OF READING 351
glimpse of the heights and depths which are opened by any of the
sciences. The non-Euclidean geometry admitting that parallel lines
may meet somewhere, the physics which avers that objects never
really come into contact with one another, the astronomy which handles
universes as the very small dust of the balance, — these sciences are
making their way down among the people, challenging the pride and
conceit of hard-and-fast knowledge, and making men ready to abandon
preconceived notions and cherished prejudices. And the science
which, by patient and sympathetic observation, is slowly winning the
secrets of our humble companions, the dumb animals, the little folks
in feathers and fur, and the larger folk who inhabit the woods or our
farms, is broadening our humanity and softening our hearts.
Such are some of the moral effects of reading. When we dwell
upon them we see in them the promise and potency of nearly all that
we can desire for mankind. Intelligence, good taste, good manners,
reasonable and sane political action, gentleness and kindliness in house-
hold and social life, honesty and square dealing in business, — all these,
we feel, are fostered by good reading. A very large question that
must be met is that of newspaper-reading. Very different, and even
conflicting, opinions are held by those of good judgment and intelli-
gence. Undoubtedly, the substitution of newspaper-reading, especially
of the yellow type, for the reading of good books would be a calamity.
But no such substitution takes place. It is rather a case of the news-
paper or nothing. And so viewed, the newspaper is infinitely the better.
Those who have observed the almost universal use of the cheap news-
paper by the mass of the people in the cities, while they may deplore
the comparatively low grade of culture thus indicated, must and do
recognize that it means essentially the education of these people. It
broadens horizons and quickens sympathies. It brings the ends of
the earth together, and puts the reader in touch with all that is going
on, thus making him feel with a thrill that he is a "citizen of the world."
And the newspaper is always championing some good cause — fresh air,
better tenements, better fire-protection, freer government in some form ;
a constant school of politics. Granted that the form is often sensa-
tional in the extreme, it is the form that it must take to secure patron-
age, and it always tends to improve. What we have said about the
reading of a low order of novels applies equally to this.
PRINCIPLES GOVERNING THE CHOICE OF RELIGIOUS
AND THEOLOGICAL BOOKS FOR PUBLIC
LIBRARIES
GEORGE F. BOWERMAN
LIBRARIAN PUBLIC LIBRARY OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, WASHINGTON, D. C.
In the 1893 edition of the American Library Association catalogue,
220 out of 5,230 titles fell under the group of religion and theology,
or 4 per cent of the whole number; in the 1904 edition, 319 out of
7,520 titles, or 4.2 per cent, were included in this group. Taking into
consideration the great variety of subjects upon which books are writ-
ten, and the enormous yearly output of books in the classes of such
popular interest as fiction, biography, travel, history, fine arts, useful
arts, and general literature, this 4 per cent is perhaps a fair con-
servative estimate of what is due religious literature. It would seem,
however, that public interest in religious and theological subjects
might easily justify a larger percentage, even allowing for the fact
that with so many persons the spoken sermon seems almost entirely
to preclude the necessity of the religious book. Broadly speaking,
the department of religion and theology in a public library should be
as well equipped as any other departments, and only the reasons
which operate to restrict the collections in other departments should
be valid in the religious department, namely, paucity of funds, and,
in some cases, lack of use.
With the adoption of a principle of proportion, the question of
choice of books arises. In general, it may be said that the same rules
of choice should be adopted that apply to books in other classes, and
thus, in theory, the question raised by the title of this paper is dis-
posed of. But, in practice, difficulties often arise in choosing for pur-
chase religious, and especially theological, books, or, in deciding con-
cerning their acceptance as gifts, — diflSculties which do not arise in con-
nection with books of other classes. In my own case, I have often
found it necessary to give the matter some thought, because of objec-
tions which were raised by prominent and educated users of the library,
and in several cases by trustees, to the presence of certain books in
the library, and more rarely to the absence of others from its shelves.
Numbers of individual cases which have come up for decision have
led to the adoption of a rather general policy governing the subject.
In the first place, the standpoint of the public library in judging of
352
RELIGIOUS BOOKS FOR PUBLIC LIBRARIES 353
any books, even religious books, is not primarily religious, but literary
and educational.
The library can in no way be a partisan. Since religion, to-day,
is not a unit, but is manifested under various forms, the library can-
not co-operate with the adherents of one form, while discriminating
against those of another. Its shelves must fairly represent, in addi-
tion to the broad field of religious literature devoid of sectarian bias,
many different and often antagonistic beliefs, according to the de-
mand of readers. If some one asks why a certain volume of an
anti-Catholic tone is allowed in the library, the answer must be that
the library collection is not one-sided; that it represents many differing
views. Or, if some opponent of Christian science objects to the pres-
ence in the library of Christian science magazines and books, the ob-
vious reply is that Christian scientists are part of the community to
which the library ministers, and so must justly be considered.
Pursuing the same general policy with regard to periodicals, the
public library may properly be a subscriber to the leading journal
of each denomination which possesses any considerable number of ad-
herents in the community. Many denominations are glad to present
to the library their leading periodical. Of course, this is done in the
spirit of propaganda, and the magazine may then be considered a
tract, which some libraries are unwilling to accept. For the sake of
consistency, they are therefore inclined to refuse admittance to all
such denominational periodicals. If church journals are used and en-
joyed by readers, however, as they undoubtedly are, there seems to
be as good reason for supplying them as for supplying the various
technical and trade journals.
Of religious histories and biographies, the public library should, of
course, have a liberal supply. All the standard lives of Christ should
be included, regardless of their doctrinal point of view, and new works,
as they appear, should be purchased on their merits. The best works
on the various ethnic religions would also form part of a well-rounded
collection.
There is a large number of books which are thoroughly religious
in character without being doctrinal or controversial, such as works
on practical Christianity, and general religious thought and life, as
well as books of devotion, meditation, and some volumes of sermons.
Concerning such books, there is usually little difficulty in deciding, but
they should be purchased with discrimination.
Religious books of a decidedly doctrinal and controversial nature
form the class regarding which there are likely to be differences of
354 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
opinion. Many such books are offered to the Hbrary as gifts, just as
denominational magazines are offered, by persons who wish to prop-
agate certain doctrines. In general, I should say that all such doc-
. trinal books, which come to the library as gifts should be accepted,
provided they do not violate all the canons of good taste, and are not
in thought indecent or subversive of morals. Of course, any book
which is illiterate or vulgar in expression, coarse, or immoral in thought,
according to generally accepted standards of morality, and cheap and
tasteless in printing, binding, etc., should be politely declined, always
with the true reason, tactfully and perhaps not always fully, explained.
But a book should not be declined simply because the librarian or
some of his associates, or the trustees of the library, do not agree with
the opinions expressed in it; and in declining a gift for any of the
reasons already mentioned, the librarian should be careful to make
clear to the donor that it is not declined because of its doctrines. It
is hardly necessary to say that, to insure fairness, this policy of ac-
ceptance of gifts must be carried out in all cases. Some one may ob-
ject that even if this policy is consistently carried out, still un airness
arises, because the gifts to a library will undoubtedly not include
books on all doctrines. But a reply to such an objection is, that any
member of the community who wishes to insure the presence in the
library of a book supporting his especial belief may present such a
book to the library, or, if he does not wish to present it, he may request its
purchase. The privileges of presenting books to the library and of
requesting the purchase of books are, or should be, open to all. As
a matter of policy, in order to assure every citizen of the absolute
impartiality of the library, it is well to secure for the library a repre-
sentative collection of the literature, especially on its historical side,
of each denomination having a number of adherents in the commu-
nity.
The selection of doctrinal and controversial books for purchase
should be guided by the same standards of taste that prevail in the
case of gifts, that is, by demand, and by the condition of the book
fund. A library would hardly buy an expensive work on the creed of
some small and obscure sect, represented, perhaps, by only three or
four persons in the community. Nor would it perhaps be able to
purchase many works of such detailed and scholarly criticism as would
be of use to only a few theological scholars, though, where the fund
is sufficient, even such scholarly works may very properly be purchased.
In the children's department of a library, it seems to me that a
somewhat different policy should be pursued with regard to religious
RELIGIOUS BOOKS FOR PUBLIC LIBRARIES 355
books. Adults either have abeady formed their religious opinions
when they come to the library, and know what they wish to read, or
they are of sufficient maturity to be entitled to a free selection of ma-
terial to aid in forming their opinions. It is different with children
They have undeveloped but impressionable minds, and though the pub-
lic library very appropriately aims to form in them good literary taste,
it has nothing to do with forming a religious bias. It is perhaps,
also, unfair to parents to furnish their children with material for form-
ing religious beliefs contrary to what they wish, though it may justly
be said that parents should themselves supervise the reading of their
children. Many parents do not do this, however. Several fathers and
mothers have said to me, "I have sent my boy down to your library.
Of course, anything he finds there will be all right." Therefore it
seems to me that the children's room of a public library is no place
for religious literature of a doctrinal or controversial character. Sun-
day school libraries may, if it is desired, supply denominational read-
ing to the children sent to them.
The religious books that may properly be found in the children's
room of the public library are those of a very general religious char-
acter, such as Bible stories, told in a simple way, lives of Christ ar-
ranged for children, and that great favorite of nearly all children. Pil-
grim's Progress. The list of books for boys and gurls prepared by
the Brooklyn Public Library contains only fourteen titles under Ethics
and religion. That prepared for the Iowa Library Commission by
Miss Moore, children's librarian of the Pratt Institute Free Library
contains only eleven under that heading. A small number of titles of
well-selected books, and those few often duplicated, form a better re-
ligious collection for a children's room than a more extensive list.
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOLS
SAM WALTER FOSS
LIBIIARIAN PUBLIC LIBRARY, SOMERVILLE, MASSACHUSETTS
The public library should co-operate with the Simday school be-
cause the public library needs the Sunday school, I suppose it will
not be very strenously denied now, in any quarter, that it is the business
of the pubHc library to circulate good books, and the more good books
it circulates the better pubUc library it is. The public library says
to any organization it sees going among the people, " While you are out
upon your work will you please take some of my books with you?"
The public library uses every team that is harnessed and is going in the
right direction to take a bundle of books along. The Sunday school is
a team that is harnessed. As nearly as its drivers can see through the
fogs and storms that beset all drivers, it is going in the right direction.
The public library wants to go in the same direction, but it has no team.
So it politely asks the Sunday school for a ride. The good public li-
brary, looking for a ride, will find teams enough. Its books can be
carried to the people through the agency of the day schools, the fire
stations, the car-bams, the pohce stations, the boys' club, the Y.M.C.A.,
the city stables, factories, and manufactories of all kinds. The Suiiday-
school is only one of many teams by which the library gets free rides
among the people. The public library has waited for the people to
come to it, but has found that the majority of the people never come. On'y
a small fraction of the men in any community ever enter the public
library of that community. We cater to a very small percentage of
the population. The majority of men, and a goodly fraction of women,
are chronic absentees from public libraries. It has taken a gener-
ation to learn the simple lesson that the way to reach men is to go where
they are. The Sunday school is one of the places where they are; and
the PubUc Library that really believes in circulating books will willingly
accept the co-operation of the Sunday school.
The public library needs the Svmday school. But does the Svmday-
school need the pubUc library ? If it is one of the objects of the Sunday-
school to circulate good books, then many Sunday schools do certainly
need the public library, for many of the Sunday schools do not have
any good books to circulate. I think it may be laid down as an axiom
that the goody-goody book is always a bad book. In all seriousness, its
influence is pernicious, and its effect, on the whole, immoral. Though
3S6
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOLS 357
highly recommended by moral hygienists of an earlier day, such books
are bad food for immortal souls. They are resultant in too flabby a
tissue for real men. Nearly all Sunday schools see now that they were
grievously in error in forcing this kind of diet on growing boys and girls.
But the books are still on the shelves, and are not worn out, and there
is no money with which to buy more books. Why should it not call
on the Pubhc Library for help? It has, perhaps, only a few dollars a
year to spend for books. The public library has hundreds, of en
thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of dollars for the annual pur-
chase of books, and is in the book-buying business. So the public
library is a team harnessed up and going to the bookstore to buy books.
It is coming home with large bundles and boxes filled with books. If it
is willing to buy a few for the Sunday school, the Sunday school is a
little slow, is it not, if it refuses the service ? Let both the library and
the Sunday school use the team that is harnessed up and is going in the
right direction.
Some objections have been brought farward against the co-operation
of the Sunday school and the public library. It is said that the church
and the state should be kept forever separate and distinct. This is true,
and it is a matter in which all patriotic and all religious men agree. If
the public library should venture to dictate what manner of books
the Sunday school should use, that would be an interference of the state
with the church; and such a public library could not abide the thunder
of the pubhc wrath that would be hurled against it. On the other hand,
if the Sunday school should attempt to dictate the kind of books the
pubhc library should buy, such a d ctation would be an interference of
the church with the state and would hardly meet with a smiling re-
sponse from any librarian or any board of trustees. Any librarian who
would try to force Presbyterian books upon a Unitarian Sunday school,
or Mormon literature upon a Methodist Sunday school, would probably
lead an exciting life. But all such difficulties are easily avoided. Let
the library throw open its doors to all Sunday schools, and let the
Sunday schools select the books they desire. On the whole, I would
advise pubUc libraries to buy such books as the Sunday schools recom-
mend. Our library has always done so, and I do not know that any
books have as yet been recommended which we have been unwilling
to buy. It would not be well for libraries to buy for Sunday schools
books of intense ecclesiastical partisanship, books bitterly controver-
sial, or books narrowly sectarian. I would buy even such books as
these for individuals; for the intense ecclesiastical partisan, the bit-
ter controversialist, and the narrow sectarian are citizens with rights.
358 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
and very frequently pay taxes. But a religious organization, like
a church or a Sunday school, is hardly justified in ask'ng a library
supported by public funds to become a propagandist of its own pecu-
liar ecclesiastical tenets. But as far as my own experience goes ,none
of these things ever happen. Sunday schools, as a rule, do not ask for
ecclesiastical books, dogmatic books, or controversial books. They
want, as a rule helpful inspiring and wholesome books for the young.
They ask for the k'nd of books that a library delights to buy, and dup-
licate, and reduplicate. We find hat they are going in the right direc-
tion, and we can ride with them without quarreling, and not without
pleasan' converse on the trip.
I hope to see the day come speedily when all the Sunday schools of
all the churches wll use the books of all the public Hbraries. There are
many Sunday schools that will not do it now, and there are many public
libraries that would not permit them to do it even if they were willing
and eager for the service. There are a few theoretical obstacles in the
way that look portentous; but they are built largely of mist and moon-
shine, and recede into nothingness as we advance upon them. The
thing works well in actual execution. Here are two institutions, the
Simday school and the pubhc library, both of them hampered more
or less by human defects and un-wisdom, but both of them with lofty
ideals, both of them trying to do men good, both of them sound-hearted
at the core. Both of them think that somehow they are moving toward
that " far-off, divine event to which the whole creation moves." We
are traveling toward a common goal. Let us go together and help
each other along.
HILLER C. WELLMAN
LIBRARIAN CITY LIBRARY, SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
Is it worth while to have secular books in a Sunday school library ?
This question is frequently pressed, now that public libraries are min-
istering so generously to children. The answer must be an unqualified
Yes. Such books add to the attractiveness of the Sunday school, and
furnish the child with quiet recreation to help him observe Sunday.
But the paramount reason is the moral influence of books. The two
or three assistants in the pubHc library's children's room deal with
some five thousand children while the teacher may have but five. She
is brought into the most intimate relations with them. She often meets
those whom the library can never reach. She must have at hand proper
books, in order to interest children in good reading. For this reason
libraries are eager to lend books to Sunday schools. Many of the
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOLS 359
latter already have books of their own; but, to be effective, such collec-
tions must be kept fresh. Replies to a circular sent to various Sunday
school libraries all over the country brought out this unexpected fact —
that if the library is to be a live one, there must be frequent additions.
Otherwise even a large collection soon becomes dead.
In Springfield, from fifty to one hundred volumes are sent to any
Sunday school applying for them. The plan is quite flexible. There
is no formaUty, except a note from pastor or superintendent promising
to make good undue loss. The books are chosen by the superintendent
or by the library ofl&cials, and are exchanged as often as may be desired,
but usually they are kept six months at a time. Explanatory circulars
have been sent to every pastor or superintendent, and although only
nine Sunday schools last year took advantage of this plan, they borrowed
among them nearly a thousand books, and presumably each book was
read many times.
The propriety of this service has sometimes been questioned by li-
brary authorities elsewhere, when a similar plan has been proposed,
but it seems quite as justifiable to lend several books to several people or
an association as to lend one to an individual. The service differs only
in degree, not in character.
In two cases, branch libraries have been established in churches,which
keep the books in their parish houses, and once a week open the room to
anyone wishing to borrow the books. At first the churches supported
these branches entirely without aid, but in one case the work grew so
extensive that a library assistant now takes charge of it.
Besides these general collections, the library, of course, supphes
numerous books to individual members of Sunday school classes. One
such class, for example, is making an uncommonly thorough and com-
prehensive study of ecclesiastical history from the very earliest times.
Its members are assigned topics, for which the library hunts up and
furnishes the books and articles. Other classes are studying missions,
and for them the library furnishes practically all the books suggested
in Dr. Griffis' " Dux Christus."
The teachers, too, constantly seek the library's aid. Guides and
manuals for teaching are often found in the Sunday school library, but
they frequently are not used there, owing, probably, to the absence of
the catalogues, apparatus, and staff of assistants that exist in a public
library for fitting the right book to the right person. Certainly, at the
public library teachers' manuals of all kinds, particularly such books
as Moodie's " Tools for Teachers," made up of anecdotes, legends, etc.,
classified according to the moral qualities they illustrate, are in constant
36o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
demand. The single text-book no longer suffices eitlier in the Sunday
school or the secular school. New methods call for much collateral
and illustrative material, and for this the teacher naturally depends on
the public library. Brief lists of the teachers' manuals, of books on
the Holy Land, of the best popular works on the archaeology, science,
and manners and customs of the Bible, etc., are being prepared to be
printed and distributed among Sunday school teachers. The ministers'
club appointed a committee of clergy and laymen to compile a list of
the best books in the library for Sunday school pupils, and this, too, if
completed, will probably be printed by the library.
The clergy and the library maintain intimate relations. Last winter
a conference was held to discuss methods of co-operation. Advice in
the purchase of religious books is often sought from the ministers, and
they are invited to furnish descriptive notes for bulletin and newspaper
notices. The library has a fund yielding two hundred and fifty dollars
per year, given by its former librarian, William Rice, for buying religious
books, and as the total number published annually in the United States
is only some six hundred or seven hundred, this sum is ample to buy all
those of general interest for the library. New books of this class have been
sent to the monthly meetings of the ministers for inspection. Non-resident
clergymen from neighboring cities and towns also are allowed to borrow
these books without charge. This valuable and unusual privilege was
instituted when William Rice was librarian, and has been continued
partly in recognition of his devoted services and generous endowment
of the theological department.
Besides books, the library has a large collection of pictures, many
of which were gathered expressly for Sunday school use. There are
over a thousand illustrating the Bible. Those showing scenes in the
life of Christ are arranged chronologically, according to Stevens and
Burton's "Harmony of the Gospels." A key consisting of a numbered
list of the events makes reference easy to the groups of pictures. The
cost of gathering such a collection is very small except for the expenditure
of time.
THE NEED OF PROFESSIONAL LIBRARIES TO MAINTAIN
THE STANDARD OF OUR MINISTRY
GEORGE A. JACKSON
LIBRARIAN GENERAL THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
I have made some careful and far-reaching inquiries of men standing
in official relations with all branches of our ministry in several states.
To these inquiries I have received courteous and pains taking replies.
The substance of my inquiry was as to the proportions of trained and
untrained men in our several associations, conferences, conventions,
dioceses, etc., and what relation these sustain to similar proportions of
a generation ago. By " trained " men, I explained that I did not of
necessity mean college-bred men, but did mean those whose education
or experience, however gained, should enable them to meet on a certain
parity of footing with the educated people of their communities.
These are the general results of my investigation:
1. Contrary to a former impression, I to-day think that the original
training of our New England ministers is not behind but is in advance
of that of a generation ago.
2. This opinion is of our ministry as a whole. In some well-peopled
sections, and among classes of ministers where we once looked for broad
training as a matter of course, there has been a little falling ofif. In-
stitutions promotive of piety rather than learning have sent students
into parishes once manned by competent scholars. But judges to whom
I defer think that this is but a temporary phase, due to influences
which are passing away. But over against this waning, we must place
the conspicuous up-grading of other and very considerable bodies of
our ministers, thus more than maintaining the general status.
3. Yet candor compels me to assert that in certain large and more
remote districts there is a somewhat general decline in ministerial effi-
ciency, which decline, I am confidently told, is due to the pitifully
small salaries given to the ministers.
4. A noteworthy fact is this, that all our denominations are getting
many excellent ministers from other states and other countries. Once
we exported ministers in large numbers: now we import them. And
we must not let any petty provincialism prevent our welcoming these
men. The colleges of the West and South show no serious dearth of
candidates for the ministry. So much for the educational status of our
clergymen. Their moral status, their sincerity and devotion, no one
36 1
362 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
questions. Our efficient school system and our unparalleled library
equipment make it unsafe for a half-taught pretender to pose among
us as learned. Our communities are few where there are not families
with college traditions, if not actual college connections. Our people
read. They know what is going on in the great world. Few churches
could be found among us where the bearing of the great Russo-Japanese
struggle upon missionary work, and the progress of the kingdom of
God, have not been considered by lay persons. And the world of thought
is known to us. The universally accepted conclusions of science have
become to us axioms. For a preacher to insist upon six literal days of
creation would be likely to discount him down in Aroostook as truly as
here on the Back Bay. And we know in a general way that these
scientific truths are not, as it was once feared they might be, antago-
nistic to religion.
All this makes the present period a very exceptional one in the history
of religious thought. Men think to-day involuntarily in accordance
with canons of the evolutionary philosophy. Nothing stands isolated ;
all is related. Fiat origins are next to unthinkable. Orderly processes
with results take the place of ultimate and inexplicable events and en-
tities. True of every other department of thought, this was bound to
be true of our religious thinking. As a consequence, everything most
sacred to us has had to bear new tests.
Now, one of the reasons why ministers to-day and for the next twenty-
five years should have the best professional books is that they may be
true spiritual guides upon this supremest subject of religion, the reality
of the revelation of God among men. For if it has taken enlightened
scholars a quarter-century to reach restful conclusions, it will take the
popular mind at least a like period to reach the same goal.
I said earlier that there was one unnamed topic upon which our people
had a general knowledge. It is this of Biblical criticism. Thousands
and tens of thousands among us know just enough about it to inspire
doubts and fears, and a half distrust of the teachings of their ministers,
a feeling that they are not telling them the whole truth. And too often
from sheer ignorance the ministers are not telling them the truth. Too
often, alas, when they do speak of the subject, it is simply to denounce
criticisms as ungodly attacks upon the Bible. This manner of treat-
ment, in communities of reading people who know that the best and
ablest divines in the country approve of reverent criticism, simply under-
mines the minister's influence. Either — so people reason — he is him-
self ignorant upon this distinctively professional subject, where it is his
duty to be informed, and so not fitted for a religious teacher, or he is
THE NEED OF PROFESSIONAL LIBRARIES 363
uncandid, and so not trustworthy as a moral guide. Especially do our
brighter young people share this feeling, those who go to college or push
out into the world.
I have granted that, as a body, our ministers have had an original
equipment adequate to their work. Had these men begun their min-
istry, say, in 1825, with a relatively good training, they might have worked
for twenty-five years very successfully, without any special stimulus
from without, because men's ideas of God's providence, of the Bible,
and of the Christian life did not materially change from 1825 to 1850;
Whereas the theological education given to our ministers even fifteen
years ago, — and the majority of them left the schools longer ago than
that, — unless it has been supplemented by somewhat diligent reading
meantime, does not qualify them for spiritual guides of reading com-
munities. And that hundreds and hundreds of them are simply draw-
ing upon those old divinity school resources is painfully evident from
the conditions aheady set forth.
What shall we ? Arraign these men as recreants to their trust ? In
some instances, possibly; but as a rule, not so. For, unlike most other
classes in New England, ministers do not have access to the professional
books needed to keep them abreast of their duties. In some few centers
of learning, and in the rare cases of ample salaries or independent re-
resources, this, of course, is not true. But when we recall that our public
libraries, while catering to all other wants, do not buy theological books,
— three to four per cent covers all the religious books in the average
library, and not a tithe of these are suitable for professional helps to
clergymen, — and remember that less than a third part of our churches
pay salaries of a thousand dollars, and many of the two thirds far less
than that, we must have large charity for ministers who cease to read,
and as a consequence fall behind in the race. For too often they simply
cannot command books, even when they realize their need of them.
Because in this showing I made special reference to the matter of
biblical criticism, do not think that I deem this the sole feature of the
newer religious thought for our ministers to know. Far from it. There
are larger conceptions of religion as a heritage of all mankind; there
is knowledge of the ethnic religions, with their excellencies as well as
their gross defects, which our ministers should grasp, that they may in-
telligently direct the missionary work of their churches. There are new
methods of spiritual work, new lines of activity for Christian workers,
adaptations of Christian principles to social and industrial problems,
a score of directions in which the live pastor may be reaching out, and
that without leaving his own legitimate sphere. For I am no apologist
364 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
for the minister who forgets that his distinctive functions are priestly
and prophetic; and that there are to-day educators, journalists, sociolo-
gists, political economists, and other professional workers, trained for
their spheres, who make it unnecessary for him to be such a factotum
of learning as were his old-time predecessors.
And now what is this work to be done for our ministers ? Nothing
that schools or colleges can do. A little can be done and is being done
by the seminaries, in the line of the work which Andover, for example, is
attempting by gathering pastors for special instructions; but the men
who can be reached by such work are few. Rather should our ministers
outside the intellectual centers, the college and seminary bred men as
truly as others, be furnished with professional books; such books, I
mean, as they need to guide the thought of reading but not discriminating
communities, whose half-knowledge is prejudicing them against eternal
truths.
Every argument for public library work, free libraries, holds good
for furnishing free to clergymen their needed books. That, some one
says, would be a class charity, and there is already too much treating
of ministers as semi-paupers. Of course I agree that ministers should
be so paid as to make them independent of all discrimination in their
favor; but as a matter of fact they are not so paid. As a class, they can-
not command the tools of their trade equally with high-grade mechanics.
And the public, so lavish with general libraries, and so penurious with
clerical stipends, is actually discriminating against this most deserving
body of public servants when it withholds from them a free and ample
supply of their kind of books.
Existing professional libraries should be utilized, and these libraries,
by more adequate support, should be enabled to do this work. Already
it is being done in part. But the work should be put upon such a basis
that not only the books may be made available to all clergymen at a
nominal cost, but that bulletins may be regularly sent out, catalogues
supplied, and other steps be taken which librarians understand. Only
so can we supply the many ministers who actually hunger for books,
rouse the topid who have forgotten their need of books, and generally
enable our ministry to become masters intellectually of the present re-
ligious situation.
XIV. THE PRESS
HOW CAN THE PRESS EDUCATE THE PUBLIC RESPECT-
ING THE PROGRESS AND MEANING OF THE
MISSIONARY MOVEMENT
MR. SILAS McBEE
EDITOR THE CHURCHMAN, NEW YORK CITY
There would seem but one answer to this question: by printing
missionary news. The primary work of the press is to inform the
public, and a worthy cause can desire no better system of education
than one founded on accurate information. The record of the life of
a movement reveals at once its meaning and its progress. When,
therefore, the press comes to print full and fair missionary news, it
will become an enormous educational force for missions. This the
press does not now do. The problem, therefore, is, not How can the
press educate the public in this matter ? but how can the press be induced
to print missionary news ? I do not lay the blame, certainly not the bur-
den of blame, upon the press. A newspaper, like any other business,
is largely controlled by the law of supply and demand. As the great
majority of people know little, and therefore care little, about Christian
missions, it would manifestly be unfair to expect the press to print
missionary news beyond the demand for it, or to become a missionary
for missions unless it did so from conviction.
But if the press is to be converted and is to become an instrument
for Christian missions, or if a demand is to be created for missionary news
which it will feel constrained to print. Christians themselves must ac-
complish this. There is a wide difference between political economy
and Christian economy. In one the demand creates the supply, but
in the other the supply creates the demand. A messenger of Christ
does not wait until men demand the gospel, but he goes forth as a
supply to create a demand for the gospel The economic principle is
to get; the Christian principle is to give. Here is an essential dif-
ference, and it is the principle involved here that differentiates the re-
ligious and the secular press. The religious press, together with all
other religious agencies, must furnish the supply which will in turn
create a demand for information about religious life and work.
Passing by those instances in which the press willfully or ignorantly
misrepresents Christian enterprise, the American press is especially
365
366 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
generous in printing news that has any vitality, regardless of the sub-
ject-matter of the news. I have heard a manager of press dispatches
say that his company was willing to pay higher for " live religious
news " than for any other class of matter, because the demand for it
was increasing with great rapidity, but that it was the hardest kind of
news to get. I am disposed, therefore, to say that the blame — certainly
the bulk of the blame — rests upon those who are responsible for mis-
sions, from the home to the farthest foreign field. If the religious
press, with the aid of all these, cannot secure live news, if it cannot
draw such news from the life of the Church, how can we expect the
general press adequately to present the progress and meaning of mis-
sions ? But in thus emphasizing the responsibility of the religious
press, I do not minimize the responsibility of every Christian worker,
official and lay. I only mean that the religious press ought to be able
to make its demand for news so urgent that the news would be forth-
coming. This the religious editor will never do until he is himself
(and realizes that every member of the Church is) as much a mis-
sionary as those who are sent to the utmost bounds of the earth .
When once this conviction possesses and controls the policy of the
religious editor, his opportunities and his advantages will multiply, and
he will demand, not imaginative stories or pious dissertations that are
worse than imaginings, but the actual facts of the Church's life as
expressed in the lives of those who are endeavoring to extend the king-
dom of their Lord and Master. In such a demand he has a right to
expect the co-operation of all Christians. The press has justified its
claim to be a power in the propagation of news, and the more good
news, living, real, inspiring news, that can be given to the world through
the press, the greater will become its power for the betterment of man-
kind.
It is unreasonable to expect a daily newspaper — I am glad to say
that it is becoming impossible to require a religious newspaper — to print
subjective and overpious interpretations of things, instead of the rec-
ord of the things themselves. Let me illustrate. If a battle is fought,
the story that is read the world round is the vivid picture of what took
place. If a political victory is won, the same kind of story is printed
and eagerly devoured from one end of the land to the other. In the
same way the world wants to know, and to know in the most picturesque
and vivid way, the victories of the Christian Church. It does not want
the excursions into subjective personal experiences or the explanations
of speculative causes that led up to certain results, with which we are
overburdened in our missionary meetings, and which too often encum-
ber, if they do not obliterate, the force of missionary appeals.
THE SUNDAY PRESS AS RELATED TO MORAL AND
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
REV. JOHN L. SEWALL
RANDOLPH, MASSACHUSETTS
The Sunday newspaper makes upon each of us a distinct impression.
We are familiar with its look. We have at least a general idea of its
contents. We are aware of certain attitudes of mind toward it, ran-
ging from eager interest to strong aversion. I offer for your present
thought a study of the Sunday press in its relation to moral and re-
ligious education. This calls for thorough and fair-minded inquiry
concerning its motives, dimensions, and character, forming as it does
a very living factor in the world of present-day thought.
It is easy to use strong language concerning some of our modern
newspapers, the defects of whose week-day editions are accentuated
in their Sunday issues. No one can deny the existence to-day of some
" yellow," utterly unreliable journals, who thrive on scare-heads, and
in dull times can always manufacture a sensation, if only to contra-
dict it in a later issue. These papers certainly appear to be purely
mercantile ventures, indiffernt to their influence if only they find
purchasers with ready money. It seems almost absurd to discuss the
relation of such sheets to moral and religious education. Such high
themes exert no more constructive influence with these publishers than
with the makers of steam-boilers, or overcoats, or breakfast foods. All
their energy is centered on one plain, strenuous business proposition
— how to get out a paper next Sunday morning that will eclipse last
Sunday's, and distance all competitors in sales and profits. What dif-
ference does it make to them whether their voluminous sheets are used
for Sunday school text-book or for carpet- linings, if once they are
bought ?
We need not mince terms in dealing with such literary phenomena ;
but, fortunately, they are the exception, and not the rule, in the news-
paper world. We must discriminate between them and a different
class, one of whose managers I have questioned, and from whose reply
I make the following quotation: " The aims, motives, and policy of
a Sunday paper do not differ from those of any other paper during
the week. The main difference is in the size and quality of reading
matter, which is carefully selected to entertain, instruct, and amuse the
reader. In that particular it may antagonize the preacher, and in that
367
368 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
alone. The great majority of newspapers are conducted with a high
moral principle, which causes their managers to throw away sensation
after sensation that readers would undoubtedly devour if they could
but get the chance. A newspaper manager would be a fool who had
no concern for the influence of his paper; if its influence was bad, it
would sell only spasmodically. To go into the homes of the people,
you must give a clean, reliable paper, or it does not sell. The motive
of the publisher is to produce a paper that interests the women and
children; that a man, no matter who, will be glad to bring home to
his family."
In 1884 there were 78 daily papers publishing Sunday editions, a
custom which began during war times forty years ago. (There were also
153 weekly papers with Sunday as their publication date, which have
since nearly doubled in number; few of these, however, have as large
a circulation as one thousand, and they need no special consideration
in this discussion.) In 1884 there were in the five cities of New York,
Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Boston seventeen dailies with
Sunday editions; eleven in foreign languages, with average weekly
circulation close to 150,000; the remaining six in English, aggregating
over 200,000. What do we find after twenty years? These 78 Sun-
day papers have increased in number to 336, and their circulation to
approximately ten millian copies each week. The showing in the five
cities mentioned is now as follows:
F(
New York
Chicago
Philadelphia
St. Louis
Boston
29 560, 000 34 4, 546, 400
This advance in these our largest cities is noteworthy, seventeen
papers becoming in two decades 63, and multiplying their circulation
fifteen-fold; but equally so is the progress of the remaining 61 dailies
in other cities, whose number has risen since 1884 to 273, and whose
circulation also touches the five-million mark. It is important to note
that the locations of these papers are quite evenly distributed; one or
more is published in every state of the Union, save Delaware, Nevada,
New Hampshire, Vermont, and Wyoming ; and in every territory ex-
cept New Mexico and Alaska. By use of special trains and the issuing
of early editions beginning at midnight Saturday, these papers reach
;ign
Circulation
English
Circulation
7
331, 000
13
I, 642, 600
8
103, 000
6
928, 800
2
116, 000
6
721, 800
2
10, 000
5
520, 000
0
4
733, 200
THE SUNDAY PRESS 369
the remotest railroad points in New England, for example, before Sun-
day noon. Here, then, we have a grand total of ten million Sunday
papers sent out fifty-two limes a year, reaching each week, at the lowest
estimate, twenty-five million readers, or one third of our population,
who eagerly pay in nickels (and sums reaching as high as eight and
ten cents in remote places) between $26,000,000 and $30,000,000
every twelve months.
Let us admit that the Sunday paper cannot be suppressed nor
checked in its growth, and as a logical sequence of that admission, let
us frankly refuse to longer ignore its influence. It must be reckoned
with in any truthful estimate of the forces affecting religious and moral
standards. The most that its bitterest opponent could hope to accom-
plish would be to thrust back the hour of its publication to Saturday
afternoon; but this result is about as likely to happen as the stopping
of all trolley-cars on the Lord's day. If it occurred, it would still leave
this huge mass of reading matter, unchanged a whit in its character,
in the hands of the people, and that, too, on the one day of the week
which is becoming the only leisure time left to Americans — ministers
excepted — for reading.
Can we, then, hope in any way to change the prevailing character
of the Sunday press, so as to lessen elements in it which seem reli-
giously or morally hurtful, or at the least useless ? and can we substitute
something really helpful? Yes; ij we know how. We ministers can-
not do it by scolding our people for staying at home with their papers
Sunday morning, and missing our sermons. We cannot do it by con-
demning, however justly, certain features of the paper which seem to
us poor reading for Sunday or any other day. Nor ought we to be too
confident that the millennium is at hand because in the columns of the
Sunday paper famous divines and distinguished educators write on
themes of momentary sensation, even though a few threads of religion
and morals may be discerned interwoven into the fabric. The only
way to change the Sunday press so as to make it forceful for righteous-
ness and truth is to go to the editor's office and lay upon his desk some
new literary wares, embodying in skilful form your moral dynamic,
and then persuade him that there will be a market for the paper that
prints it. This is no impossible achievement; but it needs more com-
mon sense than simply offering a sermon, written on both sides of the
paper and interlined in a clergyman's average penmanship. This sup-
position is not a caricature; it is, unfortunately, too often a fair illus-
tration of the sagacity used in attempts to get religious matter into
the daily press. There is nothing which the editors of all the Sunday
370 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
papers in the land want so much at this precise moment as something
new and interesting; some attractive " feature" for next Sunday's
issue; something that will catch the eye of the man floundering amid
the billowy waves of two hundred square feet of ink-smeared wood-
pulp, and offer to him a good hope of rescue from drowning in a del-
uge of " things he has seen before." How much confidence do we
really have in the attractiveness of the great verities of religion and
morals? Is our strong speech on this theme always sincere? We are
so fond of saying that the gospel of Christ is the most interesting thing
in the world. Do we believe what we say? and can we make the as-
sertion good? The gospel is certainly a sufficient novelty to many of
the present readers of Sunday papers. Whatever men's indifference
to the abstract doctrines of religion and differences of religious sects,
all are keenly alive to the victories of vital religion in truthful and
honest lives. There was never an hour when the masses of our coun-
trymen were more stirred over injustice and the triumph of shrewd
knavery, or more eager for anything that will make good morals domi-
nant in the men with whom they do business day by day.
Now, whenever the teacher of religion or morals, distressed over the
lacks of the Sunday press and eager to see its great power turned to
higher uses, can present themes of higher interest in a form whose
attractiveness to readers will fit his own estimate of the importance of
his matter, the problem will be solved. He will find no difficulty in
the substitution of such matter for something now in the Sunday paper,
and which is staying there only until the editor can find something
which his customers would prefer. The hopefulness of such suc-
cess is strengthened by the present transformation of the Sunday paper
from a mere collection of the last day's news into a weekly magazine,
thus permitting the widest range of literary substance and form, —
biography, interviews, parable, or fiction. There may be found already,
in some Sunday papers, occasional articles possessing religious or moral
worth; but the largest charity is forced to admit their infrequency.
The practical problem is, can and will the number of such articles be
increased by those who honestly aspire for usefulness to the cause
which we represent here this afternoon? Do any of us care and dare
to compete with the present feature-makers of the Sunday paper, and
thus make a practical effort to better the relations between it and the
highest educational and religious values?
THE RELATION OF THE RELIGIOUS PRESS TO THE
POPULARIZATION OF BIBLE STUDY
REV. FREDERICK A. BISBEE, D. D.
EDITOR OF THE UNIVERSALIST LEADER, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
In a sense, we have a new Bible and a new method, which have com-
manded the attention of a new class, and in a measure discouraged the
attention and interest of the large mass of once eager readers, if not
students. It is quite generally accepted among reHgious teachers that
the new Bible which the new method has given has lost none of its
charm and none of its value, but rather has been enriched and made
more efficient for service when it shall again resume its regal place in
popular favor. And the question before us at this time is, What can
the Religious Press do to revive or awaken popular interest ?
It is my conviction that there is no instrumentality posessed of such
large possibilities along this line as the Religious Press and that there
is no more worthy object to command its enthusiastic service. It is
possible for the reUgious press to recall the Bible from the attic and
the closet and lay it open again in the family circle and the Sunday
school class. But there are conditions.
The first condition is that the religious press shall earnestly want
to do this thing. And that condition does not obtain to-day. The
policy of the rehgious press does not differ from the modem pulpit
in cultivating a diversity of interests to such an extent as to defeat any
specific purpose. I only note the facts to which we have all been
driven, as it seems to us, however unwillingly; the fact that we have
pushed the distinctly religious interests, to foster which we were called
into being, farther and farther back in our papers to make room for
the so-called " hve topics " of secular life, devoting our conspicious
columns to the discussion of current events, to exactly the same class
of editorial work we find in the secular press, flattering ourselves
that we are molding national or even international life. We all want
to be all-round editors, instead of sticking to our own peculiar business
of planting and fostering religion as the chief interest of mankind.
Trace any religious journal to its origin, and we shall find it had
its birth in some splendid sacrifice; there were those who believed
their faith was essential to the welfare and happiness of the world,
and they were determined, at whatever cost, to send that faith forth
on its benevolent mission; they gave their money, their time, their
371
372 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
strength, their very hfe, for that purpose; they did not think of making
money; they did not say, " Twenty thousand circulation will com-
mand so much advertising," but they did say, " Twenty thousand cir-
culation will help to save two thousand souls." Once, religious papers
were started because they had something to say; now, they are started
under the vain delusion that they will pay! The passing of two of the
leading religious journals of America over to the secular field, the
turning of their backs upon the sublime purpose of their founders,
can be looked upon as little less than a disaster, especially when many
others follow their progress with envious eyes. It is true that new
conditions, the multiplying of periodicals, have narrowed the field of
the church paper, but it still has its unique field, its peculiar talent,
which it must cultivate, or it will be taken away and given to another.
The primary purpose of the religious journal is to foster religion,
all else must be merely incidental; in proportion as it departs from
this purpose does it cease to have reason for being. When we suffer
or encourage the crowding of the specifically religious into the ob-
scurity of small type and narrow columns to make room for superfi-
cially " interesting," we are not only disloyal to our holy purpose, but,
I firmly believe, are committing slow but certain suicide.
Fundamental to all religious teaching is the Bible. As a matter
of fact, what standing has this Holy Book in the religious press of to-
day? What proportion of space and what location are given it? I
have examined recent numbers of nearly all of the religious journals,
only to find a very occasional article, and, excepting in incidental refer-
ence in sermon and the exposition of the Sunday school lesson, the
primary source of all our spiritual life has been stopped up with " cur-
rent events," alleged " literature," or essays on political, sociological
or economical themes. Is this the way to make the Bible popular?
We can be sure others will think no higher of the Bible than we think;
and when we banish it to the back part of our paper, we can be sure
our readers will banish it to the back part of their minds and hearts.
Another condition of popularization is a popular presentation. And
herein do we face serious difficulties. The editor, recognizing the
steps already taken in the new and scientific treatment of the
Scriptures, cannot encourage publication of the old methods and the
old results; we naturally want the new and better, but the new is still
in the hands of those who are academic rather than popular; the re-
sult is that we shut out the old if it is offered and when we seek the new
we get only that which belongs to the classroom or the Monday morn-
ing convocation; for the new Bible is still so largely in the hands of
THE POPULARIZATION OF BIBLE STUDY 373
the student. Thus is the editor ground between the upper and nether
stones.
We have to keep in mind that the vast majority of our readers are
the people, and not the ministers. I fancy my own experience has been
duplicated in other offices. With a sincere desire to put the good
results of the new Bible study before our readers, so that they would
see and understand that their Bible is not being despoiled of its riches,
but is being enriched and hfted to a still higher plane of service and
exalted to greater honor, I tried to secure from those who were most
competent to speak articles which should accomplish this purpose.
And what did I get? Theses on the process of criticism, of great worth,
and perfectly adapted to the classroom of the seminary, but of no
worth, of no interest to the average reader.
But I am not discouraged; when we really want a Uterature which
will help restore the Bible to its supreme place in the hearts of the
people, we shall get it; and with that at our command, we can make
large contribution to the restoration.
Yet another, and perhaps most important, condition is, hearty
editorial sympathy and service. After all is said, the real direction
and force of a paper's influence is determined by the editor, — else he
should not be the editor. He may be open-minded and generous, and
admit to his columns the most antagonistic matter, yet, consciously
or unconsciously, he shapes the policy and purpose to his own mind.
As to specific methods, I confess myself at fault; I believe in the
editorial, of course, but the editorial which supports and is supported
by the able article has a larger measure of efficiency. It is not possible
to work out systems of study on the editorial page ; it is possible to awaken
interest, to cultivate and sharpen the appetite, to stir motives, to give
momentum. It is possible to magnify the study of the Bible as chief
among the life-studies. And why do we not ? We exploit other books,
and call our constituency to the reading and study of them; we play
at politics and toy with literature, and study schemes for social better-
ment, while the Book of books, the Treasure-chamber of God's Word,
the greatest literature of the ages, the source of all true pohtics, the
fountain-head of all social reform, the secret of all Christian character,
which alone can redeem the world and bring in the kingdom of Heaven,
lies neglected, unread in the homes, perfunctorily in the pulpit, while
in the so-called Bible class we study about it but do not study it.
XV. CORRESPONDENCE INSTRUCTION
THE PLACE AND POSSIBILITIES OF CORRESPONDENCE
IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
PRESIDENT FRANK W. GUNSAULUS, D.D.
ARMOUR INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; PASTOR CENTRAL CHURCH, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
I remember, as I stand here, that once upon a time Mr. Armour, the
founder of the Armour Institute of Technology, visited this city of
Boston with me, and after we had looked over the work which is done so
nobly here by the Massachusetts institute, we tried to re-lay the founda-
tions of the institute in Chicago. He said to me about a year after that,
when once he was visiting the institute and saw a good many well-
dressed young men there, " I don't know whether this is the thing I
wanted to do or not. I want to get at the man in the overalls and the
man with the dinner-pail. It seems to me that there ought to be some
way to get this institution to the man who can't get to the institution.
Now, with sausages and with hams and soap we go to the people, and it
does n't seem to me an undignified thing for an institution of learning to
go to the people who need it the most." In that spirit we began the
work of instruction by correspondence.
Let it be understood at the very beginning, that instruction by corre-
spondence is no substitute whatever for other kinds, any better and more
efl&cient kinds, of instruction. It is a last resort. It is an effort to get
at the man who can't get at the instruction himself. It is a sincere
desire, taking an organized form, and working along lines that seem
sensible and are also very inspiring in their nature and in their tendency,
to do something for the man who not only needs it the most, but for the
man whom the world needs the most, for the man of the democracy,
for the man whose relationship to life, through his family, is an ef-
cient one, a relationship to be husbanded and guarded and to be rein-
spired as often as possible, in order that the pyramid of our American
thoughtful Hfe may rest upon its base, and in order that out of the de-
mocracy there may perpetually emerge a real aristocracy with trained
hands and trained brains to lead and to help on the great, good time.
[Correspondence instruction means, in the first place, a high morality
with regard to that thing which we call " a little time." Here are these
men with their little time on their hands. The day's work is done, the
man with his overalls and dinner-pail goes home: what is he going to do
374
CORRESPONDENCE INSTRUCTION 375
with his evening ? It is a great comfort to recognize that there are more
than 60,000 human beings whose evenings cannot be spent in any kind
of dissipating activity, but are actually spent so that this little time is
exalted into something hke a leading importance in their lives. And lo!
the horizon opens, the man finds himself in league with scholars, he
realizes the fact that he belongs to the great republic of educated people,
or people who are being educated, and that little time shines with so
much of significance to him that it actually creates an atmosphere for all
the other times of the day, and it glows, and its glow is contagious, so
that the other hours, the hours of his conversation, the hours of his labor,
come to circle around this hour with its splendid significance to his life
and to the life of his family.
The personal attention given by correspondence brings about a
relationship between the teacher, between the author of the instruction-
paper and the scholar, which is very wholesome and very uplifting to the
lives of these men. And if correspondence instruction is pursued as it
ought to be, — that is, if the right sort of men have it in charge, if the
missionary spirit — for it is impossible to conduct this work without
a genuine missionary spirit — if the missionary spirit is all at work,
forcing its paths of activity into new grounds, indicating here and there
the new possibilities to which the man wakes as he goes forward, — if
that missionary spirit is present, you will find at once how really it per-
vades every phase of the man's life, and how personality quickens per-
sonality, even though they may not have seen one another's faces.
It used to be said that university extension is a cheap, short road to
learning. There are no cheap and no short roads to learning. It was
thought that university extension would cause people to think they knew
more than they do, and it was thought that the whole fabric of education
was to go because people would see these things for themselves, the
wonder would depart, the amazement that stands by the side of the
ordinary professor would go, and all the cloistered phantasm that has
belonged for too many years to culture would go. Let it go. It has
gone; it will go more and more. The very moment we realize that the
cultured man is the man who can do things from a high point of view,
after the " pattern in the mount " of his life, with vision, knowing that
there are laws in this universe — the very instant that man has learned
to send his Hfe along practical lines efl&ciently, he has entered into the
great brotherhood of cultured men.
You will realize at once how to-day, say to-night, — there are, perhaps,
to-night 260,000, more than 260,000, men, women, boys, and girls attend-
ing university extension lectures. Why, do I think for a moment that
376 THE AIMS. OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
this has not been a real revival ? We are praying for a revival of religion,
with the most complete ingratitude to God for the real revivals that we
have been enjoying for the last ten or fifteen years ever known in the
history of the Church. We are forgetting this immense revival in civics.
We are forgetting the revival which has come to the world in the kinder-
garten. We are forgetting the revival which has come all over the
domain of culture since it has received a genuine missionary motive and
has been baptized, as it never was baptized before, by the Holy Spirit.
Think, will you, how all through the country Sunday school teachers,
how all through these towns Christian workers, young men and young
women, would add to the morality of their Hves, the seriousness of their
lives, the fine and high intention of life, by actually having a course of
study. Oh, well, he can get it in the books in the village library! He
may get something in the books in the village library. But there is no
continuity about his studies, he has no papers to prepare, he has none
of the training which will come by perpetual examination. If he goes
to the village library and gets his book, perhaps the book itself is not
written along the line of instruction in such a way as a correspondence
paper may be written. And, indeed, the fact stands that our Sunday
school teachers and our Christian workers do not go, and they do not
obtain these things. If they do go, and if they do read, there is nothing
of the quickening, disciplining influence which comes by reporting after
their study, and reporting by way of examination.
You may be perfectly sure that nothing but the highest class of men
and women, nothing but the very best teachers, nothing but mastery in
pedagogy, can ever supply these instruction-papers.
In the matter of engineering, it is impossible to allow the ordinary
man to prepare what is called an instruction-paper, for it does not in-
struct. Three things must be had, — simplicity, lucidity, thoroughness.
Would it not do something for our whole religious life, would it not
do something for the whole realm of imagination, if it were compelled
to be so simple that the ordinary man could understand it ? I think the
effect of an instruction-paper on a man, an instruction-paper that is
simple, is a very desirable end. But I think that to have to write an
instruction-paper, I think for a great organization like this so to deal
with the form and forces of religion, so to deal with biblical literature
and with the problems and their solution, that men can understand, the
common people can understand, the democracy shall know, will add
strength, because it will add, through simplicity, to all our thought and
to all our endeavor.
Your instruction-paper must not be less thorough than the most
CORRESPONDENCE INSTRUCTION 377
technical book, but it must he so thorough, and it must be so lucid, that
the facts themselves, and the forces and the laws, stand out clearly.
This would compel us to a recognition of the fundamental things,
this would get us to the realities of the religious life and to the facts which
have to do with the progress of Christian thought.
With regard especially to this work of religious education by corre-
spondence, no man has done so much as President Harper has to carry
forward by this missionary spirit the riches that are in institutions and in
men, and thus to effect a real uphft of those who could not get to school,
by means of correspondence instruction. Has it in any way harmed
the standards of the university ? Does it in any way affect the mental
abihty or the scholarship of any, man ? Certainly not.
Take it in engineering. We say that that is the most difficult field
in which correspondence instruction may be prosecuted. Why? The
boy has no laboratory, the man has no place in which he may work as he
does in the shops, for example, of the Massachusetts Institute or the
Armour Institute of Technology. Are you sure he has no laboratory ?
His engine-room is his laboratory, the place where he works is his labora-
tory, the problems of the next moment are problems to be solved with
all seriousness. His studies and his daily labor co-ordinate and operate
on one another.
Has your Smiday school teacher no laboratory ? Here is your Sunday
school class. Has your man in the little town, who wants the bettering
of the community, no laboratory ? There are the people whom he wants
to help. Has any man lack of a laboratory ? Here is his own soul, here
is his own personality, here is his own conduct. Connect that man at
once with the realm of scholarship, let him know that these things that
are in the air are practical realities that he may have in his life, and
you have offered a new world for that man.
My brother, the instant demand in this America of ours is to make
the common people realize that the best things of life are not owned
either by the rich or by the cultured. Just the moment we get men to
feel that the finest, the most enrichening things of life, are theirs, there will
be less anarchy, there will be less criticism of rich men. Men will begin
to realize all over how much more fair and how much more beautiful
it is to be in possession of education, to have the great realm of learning
open to them, than it is simply to possess money.
Now, what would some of these subjects be ? In the very first place,
I would have a course of correspondence instruction, guided and directed
by men of undoubted capacity in pedagogy. I would begin another
course with psychology. You will be amazed to find out how thirsty
378 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
people are for knowledge along these lines. The Sunday school teacher
is actually working at the problems that just a little further up are
problems of religious pedagogy, are problems of psychology.
I would go further than this ; I would have in every church a kinder-
garten. The kindergarten is the most Christian thing in the whole
realm of education. It is the method of dealing with the child as Christ
dealt with the woman of Samaria. It does not make a cistern out of a
child, filling it full of rules and dates and names, and then taking the top
off and looking in and having an examination. No, it is a well of water,
springing up into everlasting life.
I would have courses of instruction on home religion, on the instru-
mentalities and helps that would in apy way develop the religion of the
home. The religion of the family ought to be dealt with with as much
scientific accuracy, and with as much seriousness certainly, as affairs of
zoology or botany or chemistry. Will we get people to think that there
is anything really serious and important about the religion of the home
if it has not more place in the brain, in the intellect, among the studious
powers of the human soul than it occupies to-day ? Certainly not.
I would have courses on temperance. There are thousands of
people that want to work in this direction who do not know how. Scien-
tific temperance information and training is necessary to eflSciency in
this work.
Take the field of modem discovery in archeology, and in modern
science, unapplied science, a revival of intellectual and serious religious-
ness, what Phillips Brooks called " the mind's love of God," " Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind." That will come to us
just as soon as we put along with the rest of our culture some serious
information of this sort.
I would have the common people study Church history by the cor-
respondence course, and get to see that the great men and women of the
Church are really interesting human beings; that the men who have done
the greatest things in the world have done them under the influence of
religion.
I would have courses in Christian ethics, in sociology, in criminology,
in philanthropy, in charities. Above all, I would have courses in civics
and in missions.
But around all, and crowning all, I would have, central and supreme,
the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. My fellow-workers, we are, as I
believe, upon the edge of a great, new Holy Day. It will be a day of
revival. Shall not the ReHgious Education Association see to it that by
this means the people shall be reached, and that this revival, which will
be a people's revival, shall be an intelligent revival also?
A SURVEY OF THE CORRESPONDENCE COURSES AT
PRESENT AVAILABLE FOR RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
REV. JESSE L. CUNINGGIM
DIRECTOR CORRESPONPENCE SCHOOL, METHODIST EPISCOPAL CfiURCH, SOUTH,
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
With a desire to make the Correspondence Instruction Department
of the Religious Education Association of greater service to the several
other departments, and to the cause of religious education in general,
the Executive Committee of the department undertook, some months
ago, to ascertain the number and character of correspondence courses
at present available for religious education. At a meeting of the com-
mittee held in Chicago on July 21, 1904, the secretary, Mr. H. F. Mal-
lory, presented a list of such courses as far as could at that time be
ascertained. The present writer has embodied in this paper much of
the material presented by Mr. Mallory, and has added such other facts
as he has been able to secure.
I. A few words in regard to the several institutions offering corre-
spondence courses will not only be valuable in making these institutions
better known to those desiring correspondence work, but will serve also,
in part, to indicate the general character of the courses offered.
The American Institute of Sacred Literature was organized in 1889,
growing out of the Institute of Hebrew which had been organized in
188 1 by Dr. William R. Harper, at that time Professor of Hebrew in
the Baptist Theological Seminary at Morgan Park, Illinois. The in-
stitute is not related to any college or university, but is under the general
charge of the Coimcil of Seventy, which is composed of seventy Biblical
teachers in the leading educational institutions throughout the country.
The council, and the institute under its control, do not stand for " any
theory of interpretation, or school of criticism or denomination." The
work of the institute is confined to the study of sacred literature and
related subjects; its attitude to the Scriptures is the historical attitude,
and its spirit is thoroughly evangelical. The work of the institute is
intended for ministers, teachers, and parents. A course may be begun
at any time and the fee ranges from fifty cents to eight dollars, according
to the course.
The Correspondence Study Department of the University of Chicago
was organized in 1892, at the time the University was established, and is
a regular department of the university. It is undenominational in its
379
38o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
purpose, and the work offered is open to all who are properly qualified.
The range of courses offered covers a number of the departments of
the university, including the sciences, history, literature, and the like.
The courses available for the more specific lines of religious education
constitute but a small part of the work done by the department. The
fee for each course is sixteen dollars, and in the case of those enrolling
for the first time a matriculation fee of five dollars.
The Correspondence School of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
South, was established in 1902 by the General Conference of the Meth-
odist Episcopal Church, South. It is organized under the Genera Board
of Education of the Church, and conducted under the direction of the
Biblical Department of Vanderbilt University. It is thus denomina-
tional in its organization, and intended especially for the preachers and
teachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Its advantages,
however, are open to all who may desire to use them. Its work at present
is confined to Biblical and theological lines, and the fee for a year's
course is ten dollars.
The Correspondence Department of the Moody Bible Institute of
Chicago was established in 1899 as a department of the Moody Bible
Institute. It has the same general purpose and seeks to do the same
character of work as that done by the Moody Institute. The school
is undenominational, and its work is intended for all whose obligations
tie them to their homes or to their present positions. It is entirely
theological and Biblical in its character. The fee is five dollars for
each course.
The Scofield Bible Correspondence Course was organized seventeen
years ago, for those desiring to study the Bible. It is not connected with
a university or school of any kind, but is a purely private enterprise.
There is but one course, and all the students are under the personal
supervision of Dr. Scofield. The cost of the course is ten dollars.
The Reid Holiness Correspondence School is a new school, only
begun last year; not related in any way with a school or university, but
an individual undertaking on the part of its president. Rev. Isaiah Reid.
It is for all who are interested in Bible-study, and especially in the doctrine
of holiness. The purpose of the school is primarily to promote " holi-
ness." The expenses for each course include five dollars enrollment
fee and twenty-five cents for each monthly examination-paper sent in.
The Correspondence School in Theology was established in 1891
by the General Conference of Free Baptists, and is connected, at least,
unofficially, with the Cobb Divinity School. It is denominational and
is intended for candidates for license and ordination in the Free Baptist
CORRESPONDENCE COURSES AT PRESENT AVAILABLE 381
Church who camiot attend a divinity school, for preachers, and for lay-
men. The course includes a good part of the work usually included
in a theological seminary. A matriculation fee of three dollars is
charged at the beginning, but is credited on the latter part of the course.
The tuition fee is one dollar a month for one lesson a week, and as a
course requires eight months, the tuition fee for each course amounts
to eight dollars.
The Correspondence School for Christian Workers has been recently
organized in the interest of Christian Endeavorers and other religious
workers, under the superintendence of Rev. Francis E. Clark, D. D.,
and Amos R. Wells. It is undenominational in character. The fee
for each course is from five to seven dollars, including the cost of the
books required.
The Bible Normal Union was organized in 1886 by the Sabbath
School Board of the United Brethren in Christ. It is intended for Sun-
day school teachers and others who desire to study the Bible. The aim
is to make it a correspondence school for the study of the Bible and
methods of teaching it. A course, including the books for required read-
ing, costs four dollars and eighty-five cents.
The non-resident courses of the Iowa Christian College are connected
directly with the Iowa Christian College. It is a denominational school,
but the work is open to all who desire to enter it. The fees are twelve
dollars or twenty-four dollars a course according to the course, with
reduction if fees are paid in advance.
The Boston Correspondence School was organized in 1882 and in-
corperated in 1889. It undertakes to furnish " instruction by mail in
any branch of learning"; the courses adapted to the uses of rehgious
education are therefore but a small part of its undertaking. The courses
are five, ten, and twenty-five dollars, according to the character of the
course.
The Intercontinental Correspondence University was chartered by the
United States Congress in 1904, with authority " to give and furnish
instruction, by mail or otherwise, in any or all branches of knowledge,
in any or all parts of the world." The instruction furnished in religious
education is therefore but a small portion of the work of the university.
The cost of a course varies according to the course, but twenty-five
dollars is the fee for a large number of courses. The university is un-
denominational, and is open to every one.
The New Church Correspondence School was organized four years
ago, under the direction of the New Church Educational Association,
which now has its administrative headquarters at Washington, D. C.
382 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Its aim is to give Sunday school teachers and parents a glance at some
of the fundamental doctrines of the New Church (otherwise called Swe-
denborgians). The fee for a course of study is three dollars.
II. How many correspondence courses are there available for re-
ligious education, and on what subjects? While the number is not so
large as could be desired, still a good beginning has been made. The
American Institute of Sacred Literature offers three different kinds of
courses: elementary courses, professional reading courses, and cor-
respondence courses for Sunday school teachers and more advanced
students. There are six of the elementary courses, all on some phase of
Bible-study. Of the reading courses, ten are studies in the English
Bible, one in sociology, one in homiletics, one in church history, and
one in the psychology of religion. There are twenty-six correspondence
courses for Sunday school teachers and more advanced students; and
of these twenty-one are in the Bible, its languages, literature, history,
and theology; and five have to do more specifically with Sunday school
work.
The largest number of strictly correspondence courses offered by any
school are given by the University of Chicago. On the languages, liter-
ature, history, and theology of the Bible, it ofi'ers twenty-three courses:
on theology proper, four; church history, two; sociology, ten ; comparative
religions, two; and several courses in philosophy and psychology, dealing
more or less directly with the problems of religious education.
The Correspondence School of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South,
offers ten courses in the English Bible and New Testament Greek, two
, in theology, two in church history, or in sociology, one in comparative
religions, two in practical theology, and four miscellaneous courses,
made up of various subjects.
The Moody Bible Institute has one course in the English Bible, one
in systematic theology, and one in practical theology.
The Scofield Bible Correspondence Course comprises but one
course, divided into seven sections, as follows: Section I. The Scriptures;
Section II. The Study of the Scriptures; Section III. The Great Words
of the Scriptures; Section IV. God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit;
Section V. The Saints; Section VI. The Service of the Saints; Section
VII. The Future.
By the Reid Holiness School three miscellaneous courses are given,
partly Bible-study and partly theological, the doctrine of holiness being
the main subject under consideration.
The Correspondence School in Theology has seven courses — two in
Bible-study, two in theology, one in church history, one in practical
theology, andone miscellaneous (science and psychology).
CORRESPONDENCE COURSES AT PRESENT AVAILABLE 383
Five courses are offered by the Correspondence School for Christian
Workers, all of them relating to the Sunday school, Clfristian Endeavor,
and Missions.
The Bible Normal Union offers five courses, four of them on the
English Bible, and one largely on the methods of Sunday school work.
The home-study courses of the Iowa Christian College are two, — one
entitled " The Comprehensive Bible Course, covering the Bible, her-
meneutics, Christian evidences, Bible geography, etc., leading to a
diploma and degree, Master of Ancient Literature"; the other a Busy
People's Course, not so extended as the former.
" The universal scope of the instructional work " of the Boston Cor-
respondence School, to quote the words of the dean, " precludes the
possibility of a catalogue." It has been impossible, therefore, to ascertain
the number of courses available for rehgious education. The letter-
head, however, names courses in theology, in New Testament Greek, in
the English Bible, and in the conference studies of the Methodist Episco-
pal Church.
The Intercontinental Correspondence University offers courses in
Hebrew, Greek, Church history, pastoral theology, English Bible,
comparative religions, and other subjects, but the number of courses
cannot be stated. The advertisement says, " We teach everything teach-
able."
The New Church Correspondence School is at present conducting
two courses, both dealing with the distinctive doctrines of Swedenbor-
gianism.
III. The character of the instruction in the several courses named
above can be presented only in part. It is possible to note only a few
of the characteristics which are considered most essential to good cor-
respondence work.
The courses offered by the American Institute of Sacred Literature,
with the exception of the elementary and professional reading courses
provide for progressive lessons, written recitations, one each week, and
personal instruction, including suggestions as well as corrections. One
year more or less, according to the course, is allowed as a time limit in
which to complete the work, and for each course completed a
certificate is awarded, but no diploma or degree is given.
Two kinds of correspondence courses are offered by the University
of Chicago, formal and informal. The informal courses are designed
for a special class of students, and are arranged between the instructor
and the student, according to the student's particular needs. In the for-
mal courses there are progressive lesson-sheets, written recitations, re-
quiring two or three hours of preparation, corrections and suggestions by
384 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
a personal instructor, and a final examination. The course ordinarily
must be completed in twelve months, but the time may be extended
by the payment of an extra fee. The work is credited to a degree from
the University of Chicago, one-third of the work required for a degree
being allowed by correspondence.
In the courses offered by the Correspondence School of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, South, the student is furnished with progressive lesson-
sheets containing the assignment of a lesson, references to parallel
reading, and suggestions for the student's guidance. He is expected to
prepare a written recitation each week, which is corrected by the in-
structor and returned to the student with further suggestions. One
year is allowed for the completion of a course, but, according to the
judgment of the school, the time may be extended. For each course
completed a certificate is awarded, and credit is given for the B. D.
degree from Vanderbilt University, provided two-thirds of the work
required for the degree is done in residence.
The instruction-papers furnished by the Moody Bible Institute are
printed in pamphlets, containing from thirty-two to eighty pages each.
These pamphlets and the English Bible are all the books required.
Written lessons calling for six hours' study are to be sent in every two
weeks, and each lesson is corrected and returned to the student. Final
examinations are given on the several sections of each course, and when
the course is completed, a 'certificate of progress is granted, which is
accepted in the bible department of the institute, as qualifying in part
(to what extent is not stated) for the regular diploma. Great emphasis
is laid upon prayer as a necessary part of the work.
In the Scofield Correspondence Course there are printed pamphlets
containing lesson outlines, with full examinations. These are answered
and returned by the students, and are graded by the instructor; they
are not returned to the student, unless special request is made and postage
furnished. Errors are pointed out by letter. No fixed time limit is
placed on the course, but when it is completed satisfactorily, a diploma
is awarded.
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CORRESPONDENCE COURSES,
AND THE CRITERIA BY WTIICH SUCH CLASSIFI-
CATION IS TO BE MADE
MISS GEORGIA L. CHAMBERLIN
EXECUTIVE SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF SACRED LITERATURE,
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
It is clear that at present great confusion exists in the department
of education which may be designated correspondence instruction,
SO far as it touches subjects dealing with religion, the Bible, etc. This
confusion is found (i) in the motives upon which the courses are of-
fered and (2) in the minds of those desiring instruction, yet not know-
ing what they ought to have, or which, from the many courses offered,
would furnish the desired knowledge.
Practically, the only means of getting at these courses is through
advertisements, and a " correspondence course," so termed in ad-
vertisements, may mean, on the one extreme, a printed list of ques-
tions on some topic, followed by a printed hst of answers, or at the
other extreme it may represent the closest relationship between a Uv-
ing teacher and pupil, involving the assignment of lessons, the weekly
or fortnightly recitation, and the careful criticism of this recitation,
the work being recognized by some well-established educational in-
stitution. It may also mean any degree of personal or institutional
instruction between these two extremes, and the prospective student
loses much valuable time in his search for the right thing, and perhaps
finally makes his choice on a commercial or other unworthy basis.
He cannot even be sure that the results which he will receive will be
in proportion to the amount which he pays, as in the mercantile world,
for some of the worst educational work in this direction lies behind
an extravagant fee. Clearly, then, one thing to be desired is, such a
method of announcing courses that the student will, from the announce-
ment, understand something of the character of the work.
In the field of secular education there is an established nomenclature
which is tolerably clear to all the world. We are coming to under-
stand that it is better to call a small college doing college work a col-
lege, rather than a university, and a school doing work of high school
grade feels that the name of academy is more appropriate than that
of college. Why can we not insist upon as clear a definition of terms
38s
386 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
by those offering correspondence instruction, so that the designation
itself will characterize the course?
We cannot adopt the nomenclature of secular education, because
in the region of mathematics, science, or philosophy the subject itself
frequently indicates its position in relation to a curriculum, certain
subjects belonging only to secondary education and certain subjects
to college work.
In the field of correspondence instruction in rehgious education, we
are dealing entirely with the adult student, and with a limited number
of subjects (the Bible, ethics, social science, etc.) which must be pre-
sented in various forms and grades adaptable to different classes of
persons. The character of the work and the point of view from which
it is presented must be the basis for any standard nomenclature which
shall be recognized by all institutions offering correspondence courses.
What is demanded of the student ? What is contributed by the teacher ?
And for what class of students is the course intended ? — are the matters
upon which the student desires definite information.
Would it not be legitimate to establish the principle that anything
called a correspondence course should involve three elements:
(fl) The assignment of a definite task ;
{h) The written recitation or report upon that task;
(c) The personal criticism of that recitation by a living teacher.
To the numerous non-resident courses in which the work consists
of the study of the Bible or a text-book by means of a printed syllabus
or guide, where no personal criticism of the examination-paper is
expected, and no personal communications concerning it pass between
the instructor and the student, can we not assign another name, that
of Study Courses, prefacing this term, possibly, by the word "non-
resident," or perhaps, less technically, " home study "?
Yet another designation is needed for courses in which the in-
struction consists of the recommendation of a list of books for reading
upon some subject, and the work of the student involves the attain-
ment of no necessary standard in reporting upon this reading. What
more natural term for such work can there be than, simply, Reading
Courses ?
All these various classes of work each fulfilling a special and im-
portant function, might perhaps be grouped under the general title.
Non-resident Instruction :
(i) By correspondence courses;
(2) By study courses;
(3) By reading courses.
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CORRESPONDENCE COURSES 387
Here is a classification which is clear and definite, and which would
soon become self-explanatory.
There is a clear ground, also, for classification of courses on the
basis of their intention. There is economy of time for the teacher-
student in following a course of study, in the life of Christ, for instance,
which has been prepared with the teacher rather than the mere seeker
for mformation in mind. Pedagogical suggestions and illustrations
of great value may be introduced without in any way disturbing the
informational character of the course. Just so the minister needs to
know that the course which he chooses takes into account his previous
study and the necessity of his familiarity with all sides of his subject.
As a practical basis of distinction here, we shall have, therefore,
under each of our previous classes of work, correspondence courses,
study courses, reading courses, work for professional and for non-
professional students.
Regular correspondence courses in biblical history, literature, peda-
gogy, or ethics should be conducted either by institutions of recognized
standing, having well-equipped departments for resident work in these
subjects and endovraient sufficient to carry the correspondence in-
struction, or by organizations specially endowed for this purpose. There
is need for expenditure of all and more than can be secured in tuition
fees, in a campaign of education which shall bring in students and
arouse a wider interest in the subject of religious education.
The third and last standard which I wish to suggest rests upon
the proper estimate of the ability of possible students. It has been
the custom of many educators in the religious field to prepare courses
in Sunday school teacher-training, and in Bible-study and other lines
of religious education, which, in the world of secular education, would
be considered " A, B, C " courses. We should remember that we
are dealing with adult students, many of whom are at least high school
graduates, and large numbers of whom are active in literary clubs.
Because we have offered these people training courses which would
in no sense demand the use of their best intellectual effort, they and
the pubhc have come to feel that the best intellectual effort is not
necessary in teaching the Bible. Courses for teachers, at least, should
not be below the high school grade of work done in the history and
literature of other nations than the Hebrews. By establishing such
a standard, the poorer teachers would be weeded out gradually, and
the profession of Sunday school teaching would come to have a recog-
nized standing. It is only the better and wiser element in any commu-
nity who will pay for and follow out a biblical course by correspondence.
388 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Then why not make that course such as to command the respect and
interest of this class of students ?
Great efforts have been made to mterest young people in corre-
spondence courses, and the possibilities in this field were so large that
the result has been a tendency to pull all correspondence instruction
down to the level of the young people who wish to give only a few
moments a day to the work and have no serious or lasting purpose in it.
The work for this class of students may well be done in the field, not
of correspondence instruction, but of non-resident study and reading
courses.
It is also true that the study and reading courses which have been
outlined for young people and for popular use have in many cases
been prepared by persons who understood neither the importance of
proper pedagogical method, nor of the proper selection of material,
but I think that it will be acknowledged by those who have examined
what may be termed the reading and study courses of some of the
larger organizations, that much better work has been done in this de-
partment than in what may be more strictly termed correspondence
instruction. Here will be found the most excellent courses of the
Young Men's Christian Association, the Epworth League, the Baptist
Christian Culture courses, and the Outline Study courses of the
American Institute of Sacred Literature, and others too numerous
to mention. It is in the grade above this, and in the courses intended
for those who wish to teach, that the standard needs to be made much
higher.
It will be admitted that we have mentioned three desirable points
upon which should be established standards for correspondence work
in religious education, viz.: i. A nomenclature which shall adequately
define to the public; 2. The confinement of the privilege of offering
courses to institutions of recognized educational standing and re-
sources; and 3. The lifting of the grade of work offered to such a place
as will command the respect of the constituency for which it is intended.
What steps can be taken by the Religious Education Association toward
bringing about the recognition of these standards ? This is a problem
to be solved, but it would seem that one element in the solution would
be the use of the same courses by different organizations. When one
good course has been prepared upon a subject at great expense and
labor, why is it not feasible for other institutions to make an arrange-
ment by which they may avail themselves of the same course? The
use in common of both courses and instructors might be arranged by
several institutions.
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CORRESPONDENCE COURSES 389
At all events, should there not be a board or committee of the Re-
ligious Education Association which should pronounce upon corre-
spondence courses, upon reading courses, and upon study courses, and
give the stamp of its approval or disapproval in each case, aiming
to bring those which do not meet the standards up to them, and to
direct and concentrate attention on those which have borne the test
of examination ? The valuable investigations presented in Mr. Cuning-
gim's paper would give the basis for the work of such a board or com-
mittee.
And what are the questions which this board or committee should
ask?
1. Is the course under consideration well worked out in method?
2. Is the material for study the best for its purpose?
3. To what class (professional, non-professional, correspondence,
study, reading) does it belong?
4. Does it meet a need in the field of religious education ?
5. If a correspondence course, will an expert instructor be pro-
vided ?
It would not be the province of such a committee to distinguish
between schools of thought as such. The most conservative as well as
the most liberal parties should have the privilege of presenting courses
for examination, and the decision of the association should be made
on the basis of the five questions suggested.
XVI. SUMMER ASSEMBLIES
SUMMER SUNDAY SCHOOL INSTITUTES
REV. E. MORRIS FERGUSSON
TRENTON, NEW JERSEY
In this discussion of the summer institute as a means of Sunday
school progress, let us first consider the problem of reforming the Sun-
day school teaching force. Thousands of individual teachers there
are, of course, who might well, for that matter, consider the problem
of reforming us; but that the teachers as a body need Hfting to a higher
pedagogic level, hardly needs argument.
The first — that is, the most obvious — need of the teachers is
information and mental drill. They are ignorant of so many things, —
the Bible, pedagogy, child psychology, and so on. The first, because
the simplest step in the helping of the teachers, therefore, has always
been to teach them. Normal and teacher-training manuals have been
multiplied for more than a generation, and through the use of them
great good has undoubtedly been wrought. But they have all been
projected upon the assumption that we — the writers, advocates, and
teachers of these manuals — know what the teachers need to learn ; and
that is a good deal to assume, as some pastors are in position to testify.
When you undertake to soimd the depths of some teachers' Bible ig-
norance, it is well to be provided with an extra line. Yet are we not
told to begin with the known before proceeding to the unknown?
Most, if not all, of the current plans for reforming the teachers through
normal classes of teachers conducted locally on the basis of a text-book,
are convicted at least of inadequacy, out of the very pages they essay
to teach.
Text-book instruction, therefore, must be supplemented by con-
ference instruction, such as is gained in an institute or a convention,
where many teachers from different schools come together. Here a
wise instructor, by various devices of questioning, can draw out enough
of the teachers' individualities, and can so follow past experiences in
the handling of like conferences, as to make a fairly close joint between
the pupil's knowledge and the new truth the leader has to teach.
Prior to the need for teaching is the need for awakening. Our
teachers, most of them, know far more than they have the heart to
teach. Their conception of the teacher's call of God, of the divine
390
SUMMER SUNDAY SCHOOL INSTITUTES 391
verity and significance of their message to their pupils, and of the
personal sacrifice and consecration without which pedagogical formulas
are Hamlet un-Hamleted, — these conceptions need to be remade
in many a soul that now contentedly plods on and deems its God-
appointed duty fully done. What class, meeting for half an hour after
prayer-meeting, will stir to this awakening? What, but the mingling
with a great company, each of whom has made sacrifices to come and
more sacrifices to stay, and among whom are kindred spirits whose
friendship, newly formed, shall spur and encourage with recital of
like difiiculties more bravely met and more gloriously overcome?
And if, before this company, comes one and another whom all honor
as teacher without peer, shall not the life-power of such a speaker be
used of the Spirit to reach and transform dull lives and dead ministries
with a power that is not m books and methods ?
The summer Sunday school institute has proved itself by far the
most potent force thus far developed for the spread of the idea of grade
classification among the Sunday schools and the teachers. Beginning
with the primary teachers, already so classified, it has now developed,
or powerfully aided in developing, two other classifications, the junior
teachers above the primary department and the beginners' or kinder-
garten-grade teachers below, and is now struggling with the much
more complex task of segregating the intermediate teachers of the
next grade above, representing the early adolescent pupils. Beginning
with the representatives of the large and fairly well organized Sunday
schools of the cities and towns, its influence on this line is steadily
reaching the small schools of the country, where grade work is just as
needful, but where methods, appliances, and plans must be modified
to so much greater extent by the personal factor and the limitations of
architecture and resource.
As fast as the classifying or placmg of the Sunday school teacher
is accomplished or with any definiteness projected, there is a call for
leaders, and there begins to be created a supply of leaders able to respond
to the call. The grading of the Sunday school calls for grade leader-
ship; and the leader is almost always within reach, though frequently
not in view. Your future junior department superintendent, who
five years hence will be at the head of a well-drilled force of junior
teachers, and giving to your boys and girls of nine to twelve a rea-
sonably complete and correlated Bible and church education for the
three or four years of that period, may now be teaching a class of senior
girls, or be serving as assistant in the primary department. Find her,
and send her to one of the summer institutes now being multiplied in
392 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
the land. Put her in touch with the leaders who have found one an-
other, and whose eager desire to pass on the good they know waits only
your co-operation in getting her within their reach. Do not expect her
to fit herself for this high, self-sacrificing and permanent service at
her own charges, but pay her way out of your school funds, and add
the needed money for such books and printed tools as the literature-
counter of the school will show and the instructors recommend. Then,
when she returns, give her a chance, and she will not be disobedient
to her heavenly vision. And when the officers of your state, county,
district, or city Sunday school organization recognize in her the helper
they need in extending these new ideas and this new spirit to less fa-
vored workers in their field, encourage her to respond, knowing that
most of what she has learned was taught her by those who gave their
services then as freely as she is asked to give hers now.
But the institute lasts but for a week. You can get busy mothers,
and teachers, and housekeepers, with a few preachers and one or two
business men, to come together at an attractive watering-place for a
week; and while they are there, if they are the real people and not a
make-beheve school recruited from the locality by posters and pulpit
notices, you can hold them tight in any weather to a programme that
covers two full sessions of every day. We have sent home many a
student from our seductive seashore spot who never saw salt water
till after five o'clock in the afternoon, except through the auditorium
windows. But after the week, what then? The management of the
institute must face this problem, and the answer involves the next
need of the teacher — organization. Teach them how to form local
unions, meeting weekly in their own town, give them materials, pro-
grammes, courses of study; send an expert to help them to organize,
and to speak at their annual institute; and, in return, invite their union
representative to sit with you in planning for next year's summer
school sessions, and ask their help in securing a goodly number of
new students therefor. In this reciprocity of service is the promise
of permanent life, and of the ever- widening extension of the ideas for
which the organization stands.
It remains to add a few suggestions to those who feel moved to
put these recommendations into practice. But first let us face the
question which some are already formulating: Is not this enterprise
very much the same as the Chautauqua Assembly movement, and does
not at least the Bible-teaching and Sunday school department of such
an assembly do practically the same good as that for which you aim?
No; for two principal reasons: (i) It does not reach the people we
SUMMER SUNDAY SCHOOL INSTITUTES 393
are after, because its season's work is spread out, an hour or two a
day, and to get it all you must stay longer than our people can afford.
The work of the assembly is confessedly vacation work; it provides
a good time, with instruction sandwiched in. No Sunday school
would pay the expenses of from one to six of its teachers for three or
four weeks at such a place, nor would the teachers accept such a bounty.
Our work is crowded into one busy week; and while on the ground
the student gets all the work his powers can stand. If he wants a
vacation, he stays another week to " rest up," but he does that at his
own charges. Moreover, (2) while it is conceivable that the formal
instruction of an assembly class might equal or exceed that of a week-
long institute, the life-imparting power of the crowded session is lack-
ing; nor can public opinion be evoked or new vision of truth be crys-
tallized into resolutions and plans of action, as has repeatedly occurred
at the Asbury Park School. We are a club as well as a school; we
evolve truth as well as teach it; we criticise and reshape our own
last year's plans, in the light of experience reported and discussed.
The assembly class has its large and important functions, but it is not
a summer Sunday school institute, and cannot take the place of that
distinct instrumentaHty.
A successful summer Sunday school institute must have :
1. A field. It must be strategically placed, and must stand for
the needs of the Sunday school teachers in a fairly well-marked area,
while welcoming students from any quarter.
2. A home, — some spot that shall seem attractive and comfortable
in hot weather, and to which husbands and friends may also come
without seeming peculiar. A proper building, secured on generous
terms, is of course also essential.
3. A backer, — some responsible organization already working
for the teachers, and in a position to guarantee and partly raise the
four or five hundred dollars that a good school of this sort will cost.
This organization is usually the state Sunday school association; but
the Chautauqua Assembly ran such a school several year ago, and the
University of West Virginia had one as part of its regular summer
school work last year.
4. A circle of progressive teachers, from among whom the needed
workers can be drawn, and whose combined ideas and convictions will
constitute the capital of public opinion needed to begin business on.
This condition it indispensable. If lacking in any field, it would
probably be wiser to take preliminary steps to develop such a circle,
even if that should mean the postponing of the enterprise for two or
394 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
three years. The school must be a living organization, not a dead
construction.
5. A committee of management, which should as far as possible
actually represent the teachers for whom provision is to be made.
If the backers proceed on the assumption that they know what the
teachers need, and then draft their programme and hire their speakers,
their failure is foredoomed. Only the teachers know what the teachers
need, and they do not know as much now as they will know when the
sessions are over. The members of this committee will naturally
become the section leaders and platform helpers at the school, carrying
out the plans themselves have laid.
6. A free and strong platform. The platform must be free from
political " pulls " and appointments to please, from ax-grinding
business, from addresses that are run in because the speakers happen
to be available, and from the dictation or control of the backing or-
ganization or any other outside power. If the teachers are to grow,
their thoughts must have room to recrystallize in. The speakers must
be strong in power to help. At least one should be an expert from
outside the ordinary circle of Sunday school workers, who can bring
in some new and formative line of experience and thought. Others
should be such as can get near to the actual teachers and lift them to
new effort.
7. Extensive advertising, supplemented by aggressive field-work
during the whole year preceding the sessions. Many of the best
students will be found and induced to come, or their schools induced
to send them, only through the personal work of the field secretary or
other friend of the cause. The advertising should be directed more
to the Sunday schools and the pastors than to the teachers themselves,
though these should be reached whenever possible.
8. A spirit of prayer and of reverence for the Word of God. Bible-
study should be a leading line of instruction, and the daily period of
devotion should be planned for with special care. The school must
stand for reverence, faith, and consecration, or the hopes of its founders
will be vain.
BIBLICAL INSTRUCTION AT THE SUMMER ASSEMBLY
PROFESSOR HERBERT L. WILLETT, Ph.D.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Among the instruments of public instruction lying beyond the
limits of formal academic organization, none is proving more effective
than the summer assembly. Within a comparatively brief period
this movement has taken an important, apparently permanent, position
in the list of educational forces. Its appeal is strong. To a people
chiefly urban in character, and harried with the rush of city life, it
offers the privilege of a retreat to nature, a return to simpler conditions
of living, and at the same time the opportunity to pursue some forms
of study which will afford intellectual refreshment and mental discipline.
In such a system of instruction the Bible has a legitimate and com-
manding position. It holds easily the chief place in literature. Its
pages are a mine of precious things to be searched by seekers after
hidden treasures. The Book of Job is the unapproached masterpiece
among the world's greatest poems. The Book of Psalms contains the
most perfect lyrics ever penned. The Proverbs are unmatched in per-
fection of form and depth of meaning, " jewels five words long, that
on the stretched forefinger of all time sparkle forever." The stories
of the Bible are more thrilling than the pages of romance. The oratory
of Moses, Isaiah, Peter, and Paul, not to mention the Man of Nazareth,
suffers in no degree by comparison with the classic utterances of an-
cient or modern days. And the lives here portrayed are those of the
most outstanding men in history, a galaxy of stars that circle forever
about the most radiant Life of the ages, the Light that lighteth every
man that cometh into the world.
Such a book ought not to require any plea in its behalf to be ad-
mitted to an outstanding place in the programme of the summer assem-
bly,which promises to be, in important respects, the popular university
of the future. If education is to include, as all authorities are insisting
to-day, the elements of ethical and religious discipline, certainly a means
so admirable as the Bible must find instant welcome, and its neglect
cannot longer be permitted in any adequate plan of study. It is the
function of the instruments of education, among which the summer
assembly is assuredly included, to provide those elements of instruction
which are most required, the neglect of which would endanger the
public welfare,
395
396 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
A renaissance of such study of the Scriptures is needed to-day. The
apparatus is abundant. The materials are inexhaustible. The pro-
fessions of interest are constant. All that is needed is that the work
shall actually be done. The proofs that it is not being done to any
such extent or with any such devotion as the reports of the Bible societies
or the superficial indications of Bible-study organizations might at
first give warrant for believing, are apparent upon closer inspection.
Family worship with its accompanying use of the Scriptures is de-
clining, if indeed that is not too mild a statement; Biblical instruction
in the Sunday-schools, even if it approached the pedagogical standard
of the public school, which it does not, could not supply in the brief
periods of its prosecution the material required ; the programme of public
education excludes, or all but excludes, biblical studies from the cur-
riculum; the natural desire to keep up^with the literature of the day
leaves scant time to the most interested reader of the Bible to pursue
a line of study to which he is not compelled by inclination or profes-
sional responsibility.
The result of this condition is to be seen in a disheartening degree
of ignorance respecting the Bible, on the part of young men and women
fully equipped in other regards; in a certain traditional knowledge of
the Bible possessed by many older people in the churches, unrefreshed,
however, by recent study, and therefore the most likely to be jostled
and perplexed by any utterances out of strict harmony with settled
views; and in the wider circle of the community, such limited views of
Biblical teaching as provide ground for mistaken beliefs regarding the
Bible, for doubt and skepticism. Surely, there is urgent need of an
actual and adequate acquaintance with the Scriptures, and upon no
instrument of education does this responsibility fall more heavily
than upon the summer assembly.
Among the classes of people for whom this provision ought to be
made by the assembly, easily the first is the ministry. To an mcreas-
ing number of pastors the Chautauqua idea offers the means of rec-
reation combined with study. BibHcal knowledge of greater or less
degree may be assumed as the possession of every minister; but there
are few who might not profit greatly by fresh and systematic study of
the Scriptures, and it is a singular fact that those who are best ac-
quainted with the Bible are the most eager to increase their mastery
of its contents.
The assembly has brought assistance, also, to the Sunday school
teachers. Many of them are aware of the contrast between the trained
and skillful teaching in the day schools and that with which the Sunday
BIBLICAL INSTRUCTION AT THE SUMMER ASSEMBLY 397
school must too largely content itself; and in response to this urgent
need of improvement they are supplementing their Biblical knowledge by
every means iii their power. The least trained of them know that it is
not isolated Biblical facts which are to be taught, but some compre-
hensive view of the Bible.
Still another class, sure to be largely represented in the personnel
of a summer assembly, is the teacher in the public schools. On no
group does a greater responsibility rest in this period of transition and
crisis than on these instructors of youth. Secularism is demanding
the elimination of all ethical and religious teaching in the schools.
Christian sentiment and enlightened opinion are uniting in the view
that such elimination is a peril too great to be faced without appre-
hension as to the outcome.
Time and space fail as one thinks of the college and seminary
students, of the Christian workers in our own and another organization
for social and religious service, of the parents who are slowly waken-
ing to a sense of the urgent need of religious instruction in the home
and are looking wistfully for assistance in its provision, and of the
general public of the assembly, composed of all sorts and conditions
of people, many of whom are quite indifferent to the Bible and the
religious life, but all of whom are capable of some arousal and amend-
ment. For all these the assembly needs to provide in its platform and
its classrooms.
A word should be spoken regarding the teacher selected for biblical
instruction in the assembly. He should not be one suggested by
mere convenience, proximity, cheapness, or friendship. Too free-
quently one witnesses the spectacle of an assembly securing specialists
for its other departments, but leaving the biblical study in charge of
some unprepared and incompetent person, simply because he happens
to be a preacher and can be secured with little or no expense. No
economy is so wasteful, no saving so expensive, as that which grudges
the employment of the most skilled and competent Bible teacher ob-
tainable. Three quaUties he should have in marked degree. He
should know the Bible and biblical science as it has taken form in our
day. He should understand the art of teaching, which is of equal
importance. Most of all, he should embody in himself the ideals of
the Bible, as one in whom the Word has again become flesh; for only
those who have the mind of Christ can interpret the things of Christ.
Thus equipped, the teacher will prove himself a workman that needeth,
not to be ashamed, handling aright the Word of truth.
Of the method of Biblical study no extended outline is required. If
398 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
there are demands, and time permits, there should be classes for the
study of the biblical languages. Astonishing progress can be made
in the mastery of Hebrew or New Testament Greek during the brief
period of an assembly, where the student's attention is concentrated
upon one theme. The history of biblical times is a subject of increas-
ing importance, as the sources of information regarding the peoples
of Palestine and the neighboring lands grow ampler in our day. The
bearings of modem research in biblical countries upon the knowledge
of the Bible are too vital to be ignored by any well-informed person.
The sealed places in Holy Writ are being opened under the light from
the monuments. Then, too, the history of the Bible as a literary
product is a story of fascinating interest. The manner of its origin
and growth, the conditions under which its various parts took form,
the story of the different documents and versions, the development
of the canon, and the work of criticism in our own age, are all phases
of a theme of never-failing interest. Nor must the study of the Bible
in its component parts be slighted ; no knowledge of the whole can be
obtained that does not emerge from a study of all the parts. The two
methods of biblical study which have proved least profitable are the
attempt to gain a knowledge of the Book in general by a mere cursory
reading, and on the other hand, the overminuteness of text-study.
The Book can be known only through a mastery of its divisions, and
the study of texts must rise to the study of contexts. The individual
books yield themselves admirably to class-work. Even more profitable
is the consideration of the great sections of biblical literature, such as
prophecy, the legal writings, the wisdom books, the devotional, episto-
lary, and apocalyptical divisions. Here alone can a sound knowledge
of the progress and significance of biblical utterances be obtained. It
need hardly be added that the study of the Bible itself should be ac-
companied by the full use of the introductory literature which has
become so valuable an aid in our time. The disciplines of criticism,
introduction, and exegesis have placed at the disposal of the most casual
Bible student an apparatus which he is no longer at liberty to ignore.
This, so far as opportunity permits, must be employed in the work of
the summer assembly.
THE SUMMER ASSEMBLY AND THE MORAL INSTRUC-
TION OF CHILDREN
REV. WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSH, Ph. D.
JUNIOR PASTOR MADISON AVENUE REFORMED CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY
My first suggestion as to the relation of the summer assembly to the
moral education of children is, that the assembly itself, if rightly con-
ducted, is, both by contagion and direct appeal, a means of moral in-
fluence. This education by general environment is not so apt to be
wholesome if the assembly is engrafted upon a resort which has already
attained a worldly or unintellectual reputation. I heard of such a place
in southern Illinois, at the end of a street-car line, which, upon being
refused a liquor license on very good grounds, decided to become a
Chautauqua.
But, certainly, no one has ever visited the original Chautauqua, in
New York state, who has not felt that it is, for the summer months, the
ideal City Beautiful, and who has not been glad that boys and girls are
playing in the streets thereof. The cheerful order and general civic
fellowship, the restful Sabbath, the devotion to intellectual ideals, the
deference shown to great thinkers and actors in human life, the emphasis
upon good music, the careful introduction of the arts, the drama, and the
dance upon the plane of noble self-expression, the wholesome relations
of the whole community to fun and play, the fellowship of people from
North and South, the central place of religion in the life — every influence,
from the disposal of sewage up to the idealism expressed by " the Golden
Gates " and the Hall of the Christ, is a character-making force in the
life of children.
When we remember that from one-fourth to one-third of the half-
million people who attend summer assemblies are children, we realize
that the problems of moral education for youth at such places are by no
means unimportant. The nearness to nature, the opportunities of
personal approach which the assembly affords, the readiness with which
most of its advantages may be used with the young for moral ends, and
the impressibleness and esprit de corps of their numbers make the moral
opportunities unusual.
From the standpoint of the parent, in seeking a summer assembly
which shall include not merely a vacation but a means of moral teaching
for his child, the ten-day local assembly, with its small group of cottagers
and its large night crowds, will be shunned in favor of the assembly with
399
400 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
a longer session, an isolated situation, and a more permanent and quiet
kind of life. It is hard to see how the former can be made to mean
much more to a child than a sort of intellectual circus, a brief and infre-
quent flash of rather wholesome excitement to break up the summer's
humdrum.
But at the assembly which has a six or ten weeks' season, there is
first the intellectual opportunity. The tendency upon the first visit
to a Chautauqua, whether by old or young, is to rush feverishly to
everything for a few days, and then do as one pleases for the rest of one's
stay, dropping in occasionally to a picture-talk or a concert. Even in
this tendency to" smatter," there is for children this advantage: it is
an antidote to idleness, the curse of a child's vacation.
The original Chautauqua has two magniftcient clubs, one for boys
and one for girls, in which, with separate leaders and buildings, there is
afforded every day a programme of physical exercise, practical talks,
nature rambles, arts and crafts, camping and play, which is admirable.
A southern Y. M. C. A. secretary is giving his summers to conducting two
weeks' series of such children's programmes at the smaller and shorter
assemblies, which must be immensely helpful, where the more elaborate
club life is impossible.
The direct social influence of a moral character at such assemblies
is best gained by such a club life as has been described. At Chautauqua,
lawlessness among boys is quelled by making them policemen and guards
of the grounds, and their civic spirit is cultivated by including them in all
the assembly processions, out-door functions and frolics. The power
of responsibility is conferred by putting them in charge of the aquatic
day and patriotic celebrations. At the Good Will Pines, in Maine, con-
ducted in connection with the famous farm school there, the boys of the
farm are introduced in a wholesome way to the broader outlook of city
life by receiving as their guests at this unique camp-assembly boys from
the city Christian Associations of Portland and Bangor. At the many
Y. M. C. A. state summer camps, there is not only a mingling of boys
from many counties, a united bearing of domestic duties, and a large
measure of self-government, but the magic of the camp-fire is used to
mingle the ancient mystic feeling for the night and for fire, the fellow-
ship of song, sport, and rest, and the religious appeal. The summer
assemblies that gather many boys have an opportunity by such means
to touch the roots of character. The finest example of social spirit thus
developed is no doubt seen in the conferences of older boys which have
gathered under Y. M. C. A. auspices for the past few years at Lake
George and Lake Geneva. There not only is the religious feeling warm,
THE MORAL INSTRUCTION OF CHILDREN 401
but the sole purpose of the gathering is that these Christian boys may
confer as to how best they may reach and help their comrades. Those
who have attended these conferences regard them as veritable social
crusades of remarkable maturity and enthusiasm of purpose.
The direct religious opportunity of an average summer assembly is
not so great in some ways as one might suppose. The boys and girls
are a procession, coming and going. Therefore the International
Sunday School Lesson, with its system and its requirements of previous
knowledge and preparation, does not seem to fit the spirit and needs of
the place, while usually the well-trained and famous Sunday school
workers who may lead the assembly Sunday schools are so surrounded
by well-meaning and inquiring adult auditors looking for points for
their own work that the children become self-conscious and uneasy, and
the lesson becomes an exposition to adults with the children as mere lay
figures. At the New York Chautauqua, the Sunday hour of religious
instruction is conducted in the Boys' Club Building as " a school of
Christian ethics " by the athletic and club leaders of the week, in the
form of a series of practical addresses, with music furnished by the chil-
dren. Thus the hero-worship of their manly leaders is connected with
religious principle, and there is some mutuality about the enter-
prise.
The opportunities in this direction have not been seriously enough
realized and embraced anywhere. Adult speculators should be abso-
lutely debarred; the talks should be exclusively by those who have real
relations to child life; and the treatment should be wholesome, natural,
even blithesome, and closely related to every-day experiences and prob-
lems. Meetings with evangelistic speakers and appeals are still held
at summer assemblies, and they are no doubt immediately fruitful in
many conversions. The novelty of the place and speaker, the excite-
ment of the general situation, the esprit de corps of the unusual number
of children, make objective manifestations extremely easy to secure.
There are people who are adept at producing such results. But for
real character-making these methods are to be deprecated where so few
opportunities of religious instruction and exercise are at hand, and
where the reaction upon home-coming is so inevitable. On the other
hand, the man or woman who will become the comrade of a group of
boys or girls in their play or rambles or study at an assembly, and who
will be patient both to secure such decisions and to follow them up by
instruction of the children and conference with their parents, has a most
unique and hopeful Christian opportunity.
In summary, the atmosphere of the assembly itself, the development
402 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
of an intellectual and social life, especially planned for children, and the
religious guidance of a teacher who is also a comrade of young people —
these seem to be the three most useful opportunities of the summer assem-
bly for moral education.
XV 11. RELIGIOUS ART
THE TREATMENT OF CHURCH INTERIORS
MR. RALPH ADAMS CRAM
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
As art has owed its very existence to religion, and must continue
doing so to the end of time, so is the converse true, that religion finds its
visible expression through the art it has created for its service. You
cannot dissociate the two without infinite injury to both. Our Puritan
ancestors and the emancipated genius of the present age are at one in
this, and the painters and architects who think to survive aloof from all
religious influence will fail just as signally as the iconoclasts and vandals
of the sixteenth century failed in their warfare against beauty, and
its symbolism, and its didacticism, and its prophetic faculty.
Religion simply cannot get along without art. And by " art " I
do not mean such passing whims of society as may for the moment be
the vogue, but the eternal, indestructible principle of beauty which is as
definite a thing as the precession of the equinoxes. There was a time
when an instinct for beauty was the heritage of every human being. The
effort to separate religion from art and man from religion has resulted
in changing all that, and now there is no art instinct among any civilized
people except the Japanese. Hence the lamentable falling back upon
professional artists, of whatever special calling, who, nine times out
of ten, though perhaps highly trained, are yet just as deficient in the
instinct for beauty as those who call them into their service. We have,
for instance, the " ecclesiastical decorator and furnisher," with his brass
pulpits, ingenious stained glass and tawdry embroidery, his egregious
carved-oak altars and spun-brass candlesticks, his glittering mosaics,
and, above all, his remarkable schemes for color decoration. He adver-
tises copiously, and his name stands perhaps for all that is rich and
elegant, but really he is an affliction, for there is neither religious feeling
nor reliable instinct behind him.
Yet beauty in the service of God we must have; and the need is abso-
lute. Nothing we possess is really worthy to be used in God's service,
but by some manifestation of infinite Wisdom it happens that the labor
of love and devotion, the pains spent to bring forth absolute beauty, as
well as that beauty itself, all serve to give a new value to a knot of wood
or a knob of stone, and this value is so great that, if it were possible, the
403
404 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
product thus obtained is in a way worthy of the service to which it is
put. Beauty, then, and perfection, are utterly inseparable from the idea
of an acceptable church, and beauty and perfection we must have.
Art is a service and a factor in education; in either of its aspects, it
must be of the best obtainable, or it is evil. Here is one place, at least,
where substitutes are out of the question. In its first function it is the
intrinsically precious, the laboriously fashioned, the exquisitely per-
fected, that alone is admissible; makeshifts, imitations, are ruled out of
court, and economical devices for obtaining fallacious appearances,
labour-saving expedients, and cheap substitutes are impious and tinged
by sacrilege.
Really, I believe that art — that is, concrete and absolute beauty acting
as a system of subtle, spiritual, and psychological influence — is perhaps
the greatest teaching agency, the greatest, because the most subtle and
penetrating in its power, man has ever developed. We try to make
our churches beautiful and intrinsically precious because beauty and
intrinsic worth are a kind of sacrifice, an oblation poured out before
God, but we make them this as well because one fact that runs through
all earthly experience is that the lasting lessons come through the
medium of the soul as well as through that of the mind.
The artistic treatment of a church interior must depend, not upon
the taste or the wealth of a given congregation, but up£>n the nature of
the visible methods of worship, for the including of which the building
has erected. Puritanism was logical, granting its premises; it eliminated
art from its public services, and therefore it refused art in the treatment
of its temples. This was a sane and rational thing to do. The white-
washed meeting-house, void of the least hint of art of every shape and
kind, fitted perfectly the Puritan service from which art had been
banished in equal measure. Now conditions are changing ; art, scorned
and humiliated for several centuries, is coming once more into favor.
It is felt that if the liturgical churches are becoming once more redolent
of beauty, the non-liturgical should not fall behind, and pictures, sculp-
ture, carving, stained glass, and music are put under requisition, as they
were of old. Good ; but it seems to me there is a danger of misrepresen-
tation here, a danger not always avoided. To duplicate, in a non-
liturgical and rigorously evangelical church, the ornamentation appro-
priate to another that is sacramental in its doctrine and liturgical in its
worship, is at the least ungrammatical. Frank and honest exposition
of principle and doctrine is one of the first functions of art in its relation
to religion. For the Roman and Anglican communities there is no
limit to what may possibly be done, but elsewhere it seems to me that
THE TREATMENJ' OF CHURCH INTERIORS 405
good taste and consistency rather demand a measure of restraint, for
the time being, at least.
Now, about getting the best art. I am not here to give a few easy
rules for testing the design of a pulpit or altar or stained-glass window ;
to explain how colors should be mixed or placed in juxtaposition, to
demonstrate the proper principles and limits of decoration in a Gothic
church, a Georgian meeting-house, or a Christian science tabernacle.
These are the province of the architect employed to do a given piece of
work; and to the architect ,willy-nilly, must you go until those happier
times are come again when art is once more so much a part of civilization
that the clergyman, the householder, and the stone-mason all come
once again so fully into their heritage of the instinct for beauty that each
is himself an artist and architect, and a better man than any to-day.
In the mean time, how weigh conflicting claims, and decide as between
architect and architect or decorator and decorator ? By a competition
of schemes and a vote of a building committee, or a poll of the congre-
gation? Never, under any circumstances whatever. How then?
Simply by recognizing the fact that from the first moment of recorded
history, and whether in Europe or Asia, the laws and principles of good
art were absolutely the same, whether expressed in the lines of a Greek
or Buddhist temple, a Roman basilica, or a Gothic cathedral, down to
some ill-defined point in the first half of the sixteenth century, and that
after that the laws were entirely new, and, except in music, literature,
and the drama, just as entirely bad. This, then, is the bar of justice
before which any artistic postulant for favor must plead. If in his
words and work he shows that he understands, accepts, and tries to
follow the pre-sixteenth-century laws, then he is the man to tie to. He
may fail, and he luill fail, to produce work that will rival that of the great
years, but he will not disgrace you, and through the employment you
give him, and the standards to which you hold him, he will go on to
better and better things.
And, lest you misunderstand me, let me say that acceptance of the
laws does not mean, in my mind acceptance of the forms. I can imagine
a building and its ornament, exterior and interior, in which should appear
no single form, molding, or piece of carving the genesis of which could
be directly traced to any given period of the past, but which should,
nevertheless, be so dominated by the eternal laws of beauty in composi-
tion, form and decoration, that it would be equally good with the best
that ever was. Shifting and ever-changing modes are one thing, under-
lying laws are quite other, and these are the things that count.
You see it is, after all, and must be, a matter of general principles. It
4o6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
is impossible to separate the question of interior decoration of churches
from that of their outward and visible form and their inward and spirit-
ual grace. It is a great question, perhaps architecturally the greatest,
since a church is the noblest structure that man may build. From the
standpoint of religion, doctrine, and education, the problem is unparal-
leled in its importance. I am only pleading for this priority, asserting
the persistence and immutability of law, and condemning the old doc-
trine that it is all a matter of fashion or taste, and that in art every man
has a right to say that though he knows nothing of art, he does know
what he likes.
Finally, have some one man responsible during his life for all that is
added to a church. If it is a new edifice, then retain the architect
permanently to pass on every window, every piece of decoration, every
stick of furniture that is subsequently added. You can ruin a good
church by bad glass and worse ornaments; you can save many an
indifferent structure by good things of their several kinds. A true
church is never finished, and it is unwise to change horses in the middle
of a river.
THE TREATMENT OF CHURCH EXTERIORS
MR. JAMES STURGIS PRAY
ASSISTANT IN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, HARVARD UNIVERSITY,
BOSTON, MASSACHUSErTS
I shall only attempt, — i. To call attention to the crying need that
more trained thought be given to the treatment of church exteriors;
2. To point out some general principles most important to be kept
clearly in view in the treatment of each individual case; and 3. To
refer in some detail to the treatment of two well-marked types of
church grounds, with a few practical suggestions to those who for any
reason, in treating such grounds, cannot conveniently obtain the ser-
vices of a good landscape architect. In all this it must be borne in
mind that I am Hterally only touching upon the outside of the subject.
Of beautiful churches to-day we have almost no end, and, what
is far more encouraging, they are multiplying at an ever-increasing
rate. More and more is wealth being devoted to rearing substantial,
convenient, and beautiful church buildings; but generally, alas, with-
out as yet any corresponding attention being given to the equally appro-
priate treatment of the grounds about them. To design a monumental
church edifice, an architect, as a matter of course, and one of recog-
nized ability and taste, is employed. But when it comes to the grounds,
either this same architect, who has not the special training to fit him
for the special work, or, far worse, an ordinary gardener, is enough.
The fact, however, that you have asked a landscape-architect to talk to
you this afternoon on the subject proves that you who, as a
great educational organization, can well exert the widest influence,
recognize that we have now reached in this country that point in the
evolution of our church homes when more careful attention to the
building's setting, its convenient approaches, and the beautification
of such grounds as it m.ay haply possess, is in order, — is fitting, if not
imperative. It is coming to be no longer sufficient that the building
should be beautiful and satisfying after one has entered its portals;
the importance of its outward appearance before the world is to be
considered. Not that its interior and exterior are to be regarded as
separate matters, however, for they are, and should be, recognized as
but parts of one whole. The appearance of the exterior is but another
aspect of this whole and indeed, in one way, the primary aspect, since
by its quality it attracts to the interior or repels from it, as the case
407
4o8 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
may be. Surely, what is least forbidding, what is least exclusive, in out-
ward look, in other words, what is most beautiful and most attracting
about the exterior of the church — most hospitable and inviting —
will be most fitting, most in accord with the spirit of the New Tes-
tament, rather than that of the Old.
In the treatment of church exteriors there are certain most impor-
tant general principles which should always be borne in mind, and
should be applied, as far as possible, in each individual case.
The first problem in any typical case, and one in which the land-
scape architect has the keenest interest, is that of determining the pre-
cise location which, all things considered, the building may best occupy
within the limits of the lot. The building being fittingly designed
for its purposes and its situation, and being most conveniently and
effectively placed with reference to the highway or highways, and at
the most agreeable elevation above the ground surface, the treatment
of a church exterior in any ordinary case may be said to have a three-
fold aim; namely, i. To make the edifice itself appear to the very best
advantage; 2. To render the available area of remaining land, so far
as may be, practically useful; and 3. To give the utmost possible
beauty to the grounds themselves. The first of these aims should always
be the controlling one, and neither the second nor the third should or-
dinarily be allowed to interfere with its most perfect accomplishment.
I conceive that the two most worthy motives for expending large sums
in building churches have always been: i. The wish to express, in
a beautiful, monumental, costly structure, the reverence that its builders
have shared for their God; and 2. The desire to attract and invite
their brethren to share the comfort of His worship. In all this the
grounds are essentially concerned along with the building, and the
most worth-while use, then, of the grounds will always be, first of all,
to afford the most effective setting possible to the building itself.
A church normally, and it seems to me very properly, dominates
its surroundings, so far at least as these owe their existence to man's
agency. The architect, in this respect, is properly freer than in de-
signing almost any other building. The lines of permanent highways,
however, and probable directions of most usual approach, are as im-
portant limitations upon the placing of the building as are the size and
shape of the lot itself. And this is true not only in the matter of ob-
taining most convenient access, but also in the equally important mat-
ter of securing the utmost impressiveness or attractiveness of the build-
ing to those approaching; while all four of these considerations, namely,
the size and shape of the lot, its convenient access and its effective ap-
THE TREATMENT OF CHURCH EXTERIORS 409
proach, properly influence both the distance back from the highway or
highways at which it shall be placed, and the orientation of the build-
ing.
The unrestful appearance of many church exteriors is attributable
in their setting to some one or more of the following three frequent
causes: i. Undue proximity to the highway; 2, Facing in an unreason-
able or an inappropriate direction, being neither properly squared
with the highway nor distinctly at an angle with it; 3. The unpleasant
relation in elevation of the top of the foundation to the surface of the
ground, that is, the first floor, through its corresponding external indica-
tions, may be too high or too low, and this unpleasantness is apt to be
emphasized by the disagreeableness of the front steps, or the junction
of the vertical walls of the building with the relatively horizontal sur-
face of the groimd is an ugly one through its baldness, and the sharp
contrast along an aggressive line between the perfectly formal and the
more or less natural. One thing, the building, rests on top of another
thing, the ground, whereas, by judicious planting, the two may fre-
quently be so blended into one whole that the eye passes pleasantly
across the line of transition.
The two particular types of problem to which I now pass, I will
call the old New England meeting-house type built of wood, and the
more monumental city church, whether of brick or stone. Of course
these are only two, and do not cover all cases, as, for example, the little
modem country church which is not of the meeting-house type, and
which is fast becoming, perhaps, the most common class. But to
this class, what I shall say of the grounds of the more monumental city
church will largely apply.
First, to consider the meeting-house type. We all know how attractive
the ordinary wooden meeting-house is as seen from a considerable dis-
tance, dominating a little hamlet. which nestles amid the hills. I am sure
you will all agree with me that, at least as thus seen, it is most agreeable
when painted white, with green blinds. As seen near at hand, it can never
suggest anything but the sterner faith of our sturdy forefathers, whether
Pilgrim, Puritan, Quaker, or what not, and any attempt to soften its
severity by painting with color or much planting, even if the plants
be chosen with restraint, is pretty apt merely to weaken its old expression
without accomplishing a new one. The result is hodge-podge. Far
better is it, as always where we can, to follow Pope's advice and
"seek the genius of the place in all." In this case, then, it will be
most effective so to select and dispose any planting we may use as
rather to enforce the old solemnity of the building, its dignity, which
4IO THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
is often very considerable, aiming more to awaken respect, or it may
be reverence, than to attract through lighter quality.
It would be hard to find a building more formal in its lines than
the meeting-house we are considering, or any which more thoroughly
dominates its surroundings. We recognize its spirit to be at once
rigid and devotional, conventional but aspiring, a spirit which it ex-
presses in every line of its not too attractive countenance. Fitness,
harmony, demand thus at once and incontestably a formal handling of
the immediate surroundings of such an edifice. Were the building
of stone, it is true, judicious informal shrubbery-planting about its
base might enhance the formal beauty of the building. Since it is of
wood, this is not true, yet something of the actual forbidding quality
of barrenness which many now feel, and justly, in many examples
of the type, may in some cases be somewhat relieved by the temperate
use of some good vine or vines of attractive foliage and flower — ever-
green if preferred — ^the choice to depend on locality and other conditions
of the particular case.
Instead of vines grown on trellises, a formal clipped hedge of privet,
of arbor-vitse, or of the fragrant box, around the base of the build-
ing and several feet out from it, will in some cases look well. Open-
ings can be kept clipped opposite any basement windows.
Besides this planting close to the building, there is, in such grounds
as we are considering, small need for planting, for, in general, well-
kept turf, where the ground is not occupied by necessary areas of
gravel road or path, will be much more effective than any other form
of vegetation. But it is always desirable that the boundaries of the
lot be clearly marked, and, whether or not there be a wall or fence,
the planting of the boundary may add to its effectiveness. This
planting, in the case of the grounds of the typical meeting-house, may
often best be a formal clipped hedge in keeping with the rigid lines of
the building; its formality will tend to increase the unity of the place.
If the grounds, however, are of some extent, so that the boundaries do
not count much in direct relation to the lines of the building, an infor-
mal border shrubbery will not be out of keeping, and will be far more
interesting in itself, through its greater variety in outline, color, and tex-
ture. The use of trees in such grounds depends so upon the size and
form of the area available that no general prescription can safely
be made. In general, it is better to err on the side of omission than
overcrowding, for in the latter case the strong, simple efifect of the
type is lost. On the contrary, where the grounds are large enough to
permit, formal rows of trees along the boundaries, and even leading up
to the main entrance, are sometimes exceedingly effective.
THE TREATMENT OF CHURCH EXTERIORS 411
I ask. your attention to several special possibilities in connection
with church grounds, not yet taken advantage of, so far as I know.
Where there is room, what could be more interesting or instructive to
children of the Sunday school than actually to grow some of the plants
of which they read in the Scriptures, or which have, through the ages,
been elements of the landscape in Palestine? Surely, this would be
good use of ground, and a space sufficient could very often be set
apart for this use, without injuring the harmony of the whole. Hap-
pily, a large number of the plants native to the Holy Land grow here,
or have close relatives here, as, for instance, the box, the irises, leeks,
beans, coriander, thistles, wheat, melons, mandrakes, balsams, worm-
wood, and mustard, besides a good share of our common trees which
could be grown until they became too large. Many other plants illus-
trative of the Scriptures will suggest themselves the minute thought
be given to the matter. Many city children never see a flower. How
like heaven would the church garden literally appear, full of strange
blossoms !
THE EDUCATIVE POWER OF ORGAN MUSIC
MR. GEORGE A. BURDETT
ORGANIST CENTRAL CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Religion is the function of the soul; education — in its fullest and
highest sense — is the finding and unfolding of that function, the dis-
covery and development of that soul. Music is its voice; the organ, its
instrument. The educative aim and effort of church services, in every
element thereof, is the outdrawing and nurture of man's soul-self, the
breath of which is worship. Hence, with holy harmony of purpose
and exertion, the study of all possible educative powers for church use
is a most sacred and solemn duty. The pulse of the spirit is the ideal
revealed to the spiritualized imagination, the eye of the soul. With
this spiritualized and quickened imagination shall men, in some degree,
see God.
In the early ages in times of war, the cloister was the refuge for
scholars and artists of all sorts. Men of action fought; scholars
thought; artists poured forth heart and soul. Fra Angelico was a
type; Savonarola, no solitary exception. Music is a product of ecclesi-
astic nurture. So in the thirty-years' war in Germany, the organ was
almost an asylum for musicians; they devoutly cultivated it, till or-
ganists were as vernacular to music as are pianists to-day. So abound-
ing was this cultivation, that organs in themselves had become in the
time of Bach a foremost force of spiritual influence. Candidates were
not only carefully examined musically, but were catechised in religion,
were pledged to sober livmg and conscientious performance of duties;
they were then installed with musical ceremonials and exhortations
from the pastor. The organ was the key to all of Bach's great works;
the mold in which he thought and wrote everything. He greatly
glorified this use in the service of God.
Countless are the testimonies in history to the power of the organ
in divine service; a single example must suffice. Practorius — mighty
man in many mental lines — " thanks Almighty God that He has
vouchsafed so great a mercy, so perfectum a gift to all mankind, so full
of His praise and power to beget Christian contemplation."
Average people even instinctively recognize that the organ belongs
in church. They will tell you, in a tone of voice that means much, that
to them "there is something about an organ " — generally they say
no more; perhaps because they do not quite understand its power over
412
THE EDUCATIVE POWER OF ORGAN MUSIC 413
them, and often because of the natural shrinking from speaking of the
affairs of the soul. Most men have an " Achilles' heel " of musical
susceptibility, notwithstanding " not knowing one tune from another."
It is like a dormant seed in most men ; but it can be nurtured with pa-
tient persistence to fruitage; the growth is often unconscious, to be
sure, but the organ can carry on from Sunday to Sunday a saving and
subtle work, like sunlight and dew. It can go far to bring rest and
repose into the heart and mind, and this is, indeed, much in our day;
for rest and repose are prerequisite to all fruits of the spirit.
One shining shadow we see at the very outset: Church-organ
music should always have a spire! As, to the eye, that heavenward
suggestion should always be instant and unmistakable both in the
interior and the exterior of the church edifice, so should the music of
the organ lead, through the ear, to divine worship. The organ should
be harmonious with this purpose, to eye as well as ear. To many, organs
look like grocery-store windows, just as many churches in outward
aspect are in danger of being mistaken for fire-engine houses. The
organ music should always have a spire; even as the choir music
should always have a chime, and both together should constitute a
chancel in tone expression and impression.
Organ music in the church must be regarded in no sense and at no
time as a performance; the organist is not in office as a virtuoso, but
as a ministrant; his sacred message is his concern; he must efface
himself. All thought of admiration for himself or his organ must be
put away. He is to prepare the congregation for worship and aid them
in this. Display of his own skill or of his organ blocks the educative
power or any power of churchly influence. On the other hand, his
competency — fine and refined perceptions and abilities — his mas-
tery of himself and his art, must be sufficient to give this power inherent
in his art and his instrument free and full exercise. He ought to be a
man of spiritual fitness; not only an organist but a musician, not only
a musician but a church musician in gift and training, not only that,
even, but a man in a suitable and essential sense — no narrow or prudish
sense.
The organ music should have a spire. The prelude is not for bait;
nor is it a pastime in the interest of chronic laggards; the offertory
is not for entertainment; the postlude should not be fireworks. The
music should be clean of all suggestion of the worldly ways, free from
associations even with secular usage and surroundings. It should not
be conspicuously ornate or scholastic, but it should be a message
eloquently delivered. Habit has reduced the postlude generally to a
414 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
perverted opportunity; its possibility is a peculiar power, seldom used;
and this is not all the fault of the organist, by any means. The prelude
has a latent power for spiritual preparation by no means always utilized
by the congregations.
The music that is used should be true to its purpose; not simply
good art sound, sane and strong, but church art; not pretty, or pleas-
ing, or sweet, or sentimental, but of earnest sentiment, true to its pur-
pose. Simple it may be, but noble, elevated, uplifting, worshipful.
You remind me, perhaps, that worship is essentially praise; yes,
and there is place for praise in the organ music, not boisterous and
bombastic and blatant hurly-burly, but dignified, and majestic,
poiseful solid and massive, telling of the glory of God and not the
vainglory of man. Praise is reached or developed through confession,
and prayer, and adoration; all the fruits of devout and meditative
moods.
There must be peace within the hearts and minds of the congrega-
tion, through penitence and prayer ; hence let the organist minister with
sympathetic insight and reverent imagination. He shall select and
interpret from his soul-self, mindful of the power that is his to ad-
minister and of the soul-selves that he is helping to develop, or other-
wise helping to stifle or to starve. He must play from conscience.
And so. must the congregations cultivate conscience in this question
of the organ music, and give unceasing heed thereto. The good har-
vest requires both seed and soil of the best. Music committees should
be elected in this spirit, and in turn they should select their organist
in like spirit.
Many a worthy man is turned from the true path of power and
ministration, or is spoiled in the making, by the pressure of pleasing
that is put upon him by committees and their constituents. But we
are gradually throwing off this bondage; many a parish, or members
thereof, have seen the light. Many a loyal soul is ministering to this
end. The tide of the spirit is coming in! No clearer sign of this
than this very assembly. Even as we must bestow all possible rever-
ence of imagination and skill into the making of God's house, so we
must do our utmost to enable His voice to be heard and heeded; and
one of the powers to this end, precious and unlimited, is enshrined for
us in the organ.
THE EDUCATIVE VALUE OF THE ART OF THE GREAT
PAINTERS
REV. HENRY G. SPAULDING
ART LECTURER, BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS
The relation of this art to ethical and religious culture is as obvious
and as direct as that of literature or music, and its high educative value
is at once apparent if we take the end and aim of religious education
to be the training of the whole man in life's great school. What, then,
has been the actual connection between religion as thus defined and
the art of the great painters ?
In the first place, Renaissance painting put before the mind of
Christendom the poetic aspects of its religion. By means of his im-
mortal parables, which are pictures in words, Jesus portrayed various
aspects of the divine kingdom, making his appeal to the imagination
of his hearers. In like manner the great artists of the Renaissance
painted upon their canvas scenes and events taken from the popular
Christian mythology, from the legends of the saints, or from the bib-
lical narratives themselves, — which for them, as artists, belonged
less to the realm of historic fact than to that of the religious imagina-
tion. Take, for example, the whole cycle of scenes and events from
the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Our gospels give us only a
dim and shadowy outline of certain portions of that life. But in Chris-
tian art we have the richly illustrated biography, so to speak, of a
woman who is the personification of all female loveliness and excel-
lence, all wisdom and purity. With a boundless avidity for the pictu-
resque, these painters found another rich storehouse of subjects in the
introductory chapters of the first and third Gospels. The " holy
night " of the Saviour's birth is transformed, in Correggio's famous
picture, into a spiritual vision in which the thought of the Christ as
the Light of the world is expressed by the mystic radiance emanating
from the body of the holy Child and shedding a glory even upon the
angels who hover above the manger.
For their pictures of other scenes of the Christmas story these Re-
naissance painters found poetic suggestions in the Gospel narratives.
In the time when the synoptic Gospels took their present shape the
fervent imagination of the early church had already pictured the ad-
vent of the Messiah as a drama in which heaven and earth united their
creative splendors. The artists' vivid appeal to the eye turned the old
415
4i6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Scripture into new poetry and fixed the visions in enduring forms.
Their paintings turn the story of Bethlehem into a new evangel of
peace and good will. As we look at these wondering shepherds and
these kneeling Magi, we seem to see a great world-company of the
lowly and the lofty moving, in one vast procession, to offer tribute and
render homage to the condescending, great God, who incarnated
himself in human childhood.
In ways like these the art of the great painters set in a new light the
poetic aspects of the Christian faith. Blot from the Gospels the pic-
torial parables of Jesus and take Christian art from history, and you
rob the religion of Christ of some of its most precious treasures. A
faith that made no appeal to the spiritual imagination, an ideal of
holiness that burst upon the world trailing no " clouds of glory as it
came," would be a poor substitute for the Christianity which we now
have, and which, as we see the fair semblances of its inspiring ideals
glowing on the painter's canvas, is like a morning in the spring, sweet
with the lingering fragrance of the early flowers and sparkling with
the meadow grasses still wet with the dew.
But the art of the Renaissance rendered another, and even more
important service to Christianity. The great painters anticipated,
in part, our modern attitude toward the Bible. We no longer look
upon the Bible as an arsenal of proof-texts bristling with weapons for
theological warfare. Nor is it chiefly valuable to us as a collection of
ancient records regarded merely as the history of one chosen race.
We study it as a great nation's religious literature; but we prize it for
the principles which it sets forth in living presentations. It contains,
as no other book, a wealth of symbolical, pictorial, and suggestive truths
which are translatable into the common speech of present-day conduct.
It abounds in allegories in which, as in Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress,"
we may read the story of the soul's inward struggles and of its conflicts
with the world without. Our sorrows are there to be comforted; our
joys, to be hallowed; our temptations, to become the tests of a vic-
torious manhood. It tells us of strenuous faith that wins the crown;
of buoyant and patient hope; of helpful love, which, passing through
the clarifying alembic of the consecrated soul, becomes a love divine,
" that stoops to share man's sharpest pang, his bitterest tear."
This higher valuation of the Bible was felt and acted upon by the
great painters. They would have' had little patience with the pietistic
literalism which seeks to understand and interpret the New Testament
by studying the altered scenery of the Holy Land and associating with
the Arabs of modern Syria. " Christ and his Apostles," the art critic.
THE EDUCATIVE VALUE OF THE PAINTERS' ART 417
Mr. Beranson, has well said, " were to these painters the embodiment
of living principles and living ideas. They could not think of them
otherwise than as people of their own kind, living under conditions
easily intelligible to themselves and their fellow-men. The more
familiar, then, the look and surroundings of Biblical and saintly per-
sonages, the more would they drive home the principles and ideas
which they incarnated." It is easy to carry this view of the matter too far.
We read ourselves into the men whom we read about ; and we think
that what we find, or what finds us, in a book or in a picture is what the
author or the painter put into it. But, with all allowance for mistakes
of this sort, we cannot fail to see that these Renaissance painters brought
the old stories and the old-time events out of the dead Past and set
them with intelligible forms and warm colors into the midst of the
living Present. In doing this the artists, unconsciously perhaps, but
none the less effectively, detached ideas and ideals from the written
records and brought them close to our common human sympathies.
How full of meaning, too, are the great painters' representations of
scenes from the ministry of Jesus! What a rebuke was given to the
carping judgments of living sinners when the woman taken in adultery
makes her mute appeal to the merciful Galilean in the midst of a com-
pany composed, not of ancient Jews, but of the sensualists and liber-
tines of his own day and his own city! Even the painful scenes of
Passion Week make a deeper impression as those who looked upon
the pictures recognized the place as their own neighborhood, and saw,
in the brutal, angry throng, their fellow-citizens; for, in this way, it
was borne in upon their minds that they and such as they might crucify
their Lord afresh. Or, turn again to the Madonna pictures by the
Great Masters. To his vision of the Eternally Feminine, Dante had
raised, in the Paradiso, his hymn of praise:
." Whatsoe'er may be
Of excellence in creature, pity mild,
Relenting mercy, large munificence,
Are all combined in thee."
In many of the masterpieces of Renaissance paintings this gracious
and beautiful creation of religious poetry and Christian mythology,
the Madonna — the Mother, whose heart of joy is shadowed by the
sorrows which her Babe one day must bear — expresses, as no dogma
of the creeds ever expressed, the essential meaning of that self- forgetting,
self-sacrificing love of which the Cross is the abiding symbol.
ARTISTIC STUDIES IN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES
PROFESSOR WALDO S. PRATT, Mus.D.
HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
The importance of this topic from our point of view needs no ex-
tended emphasis. We are charged with the problem of arousing
interest in the various applications of the fine arts to religious uses,
and, if possible, of stimulating advance in such applications. But
nearly all of these applications that we can touch take place in the
routine of church life and activity. Pre-eminently do they appear in
the great field of public worship as one aspect of that life. In this
field all must recognize the immense influence of the ministry in de-
termining what shall be the canons of theory and what the usages
of praxis. To a degree that is almost appalling, public worship is
what the ministry makes it, particularly in those communions where
liturgical rules and traditions are most flexible or formless. More
than this, popular thought about all that pertains to public worship
or branches out from it must be strongly dominated by the average
thought among the ministry. " Like priest, like people."
If, then, we would move wisely and effectively toward the popular
uplifting of church building and decoration, of church music and
hymnody, of the use of artistic appliances in Sunday school instruction,
of the religious apphcations of Uterary art both in the church and in
the home, and of the whole popular apprehension of the interrelation
between things aesthetic and things reHgious, we must early concen-
trate effort upon the strategic center of the whole situation — which
is the ministry. Unless the ministry generally can be awakened to
the altogether unique values of fine art in manifold forms for accom-
plishing spiritual results of the highest importance and the greatest
permanence, we shall be driven to the much slower process of so generat-
ing thought among the laity that they in time shall compel the
clergy to move, whether they will or no.
But we should cordially acknowledge that among ministers there
are many whose minds are open in this direction and who are eager
to recover for Christianity to-day that artistic power that it has had in
other ages in fuller measure than now. Ministers of this class, how-
ever, can hardly be said to be common, or, so to speak, typical. They
are scattered here and there, and there are few means by which their
efforts can come to combined expression and so exert their full power.
418
ARTISTIC STUDIES IN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 419
We may perhaps venture the guess that most of them are men of
middle age, whose interest in the artistic side of reHgion has grown
gradually as experience has broadened and as reflection has become
mature. The younger men, as a rule, seem much less commonly in
sympathy with this aspect of Christian effort. To some of them
artisticness means effeminacy or luxury, and perhaps a care for the
beautiful seems like carelessness about the true and the good. Neither
in college nor in the seminary have they received any positive impulse
to think otherwise. All their contacts with art have been with it as
simple amusement, and usually very empty-headed and even heartless
amusement at that. I think that it is safe to say that the constant
influx of young Hfe into the ministry is not bringing with it any con-
siderable knowledge of the fine arts in their larger forms nor any de-
cided purpose to apply them vigorously in their God-intended work in
the interest of sphrituality.
This brings us face to face with our question. In what directions
should the theological seminary aim to teach artistic subjects? which
of these are most necessary and most practicable? and what methods
are germane in each? The time here at our disposal is so short that
no adequate statement can be made of this really extensive subject.
What I shall say must stand without argument or illustration for the
most part.
Art topics, it is now well understood, can enter into formal educa-
tion in three somewhat distinct ways. First, the student may be
introduced to the technical processes of an art and drilled in these as if
his object was to become an artist — a method that presupposes some
noticeable natural aptitude and that involves a large expenditure of
time. Second, instead of working thus synthetically, he may be trained
in the analysis of art products and given a historian's sense of how
they have been gradually developed as expressions of civilization —
a method that has the great advantages of being analogous to meihods
in constant use in other fields and of making not too great demands upon
the student's time. Third, instead of either pursuing technical skill
or scientific or historical information, efforts may be made to present
to the student's appreciation in a somewhat informal way more or less
extensive collections or reproductions of art works for their general
cultural effect. Each of these methods has its own decided value,
and through various combinations of them art subjects of different
kinds may be made integral parts of a curriculum in any educational
institution. For the needs of a theological seminary they should be
used with due regard to the limitations of time and relative emphasis
420 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
that are more orless obvious. In colleges and universities all of them
are in successful operation in the interest of several different fine arts,
notably in literature. The question for us is as to how much of them
may be practical and desirable in a seminary. Let us take the three
methods in turn.
Technical training for the sake of active artistic skill is called for
in a seminary in three forms of fine art — in literary composition, in
public reading and speaking, and in singing (with possibly the rudi-
ments of musical construction). The acquisition of a forcible literary
style as a true art is of inestimable importance to a minister, since
language, written and spoken, is the tool whereby the minister does
most of his professional work. All seminaries have prolonged courses
in homiletics, or the preparation of sermons, yet these plainly do
not suffice to make their graduates the experts in the use of English
that they ought to be. It is disagreeably notorious that the average
minister is careless and crude in this direction, and the worst of it is,
that he so often despises culture of this sort as merely a decorative
accompKshment rather than something that concerns the very sub-
stance and potency of all that he is to say or write. All seminaries,
too, have some drill in the art of pubUc speaking, especially in its
more advanced forms. Very few of them, however, go down to the
root of the matter or provide systematically concatenated courses.
For myself, I must beheve that one of the prime essentials in a semi-
nary is drill in voice-building, through individual lessons at first, so as to
ascertain and correct those deep-lying faults or misconceptions that
often hamper a minister throughout his career. The object at first
should be the real culture of the conversational voice quite as much
as the so-called " oratorical " voice. On this foimdation many dif-
ferent and more advanced lines of special study can be rested with
hope of real utility. Voice-building, too, opens the way toward the
art of singing, which almost every one now recognizes as of the greatest
importance for the active minister. Here again the plea must be for
attention to the matter systematically, beginning with the art of sight-
singing, with its involved drill in part-singing. This will pass over
more or less, especially with some students, into a study of the rudi-
ments of harmony, but this need not be pressed as a necessity. That
seminary is especially fortunate to those students to whom is also acces-
sible the practice of well-drilled chorus choirs or a choral society,
since these provide that more elaborate experience with part-singing
which is almost out of the question in the seminary itself. We put
down, then, on our Hst of courses in art subjects designed to give real
ARTISTIC STUDIES IN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 421
artistic skill of a strictly technical sort, three items: Drill in literary
style, drill in vocal expression, drill in singing.
Fully as strong a plea may be made for courses of a scientific or
historical character in a number of directions. Such courses are
naturally carried on through lectures, the benefit of which consists in
the gradual acquisition by the student, not only of a large body of in-
formation, but of a personal keenness of appreciation and discrimina-
tion that is quite as important. I almost hesitate to give the list of
topics that seem to me important and somewhat practical, simply be-
cause I shall be charged with being chimerical. Yet most of the topics
that I would urge have been tried in some way and found possible and
useful. In most seminaries there is a call for some work in EngUsh litera-
ture, especially in its relations to religion and morals. This may take
many forms; such as, the Theology of the English Poets, the Moral
Influence of Fiction or the Drama, the Impress of the Historic Church
upon the Development of Literary Art in General. Probably, there
would be an advantage in having the point of view varied from year
to year. Doubtless there is a place for courses upon the style and
thought of particular writers of conspicious power, such as any one
might name. In connection with the work in elocution, there ought
to be some historical and critical work done to give an idea of the vast
extent of the field of eloquence in its several great applications. The
field of music, too, offers an unlimited range of useful themes, begin-
ning with that which joins hard upon literature, upon theology and
upon practical spirituality, namely, the history of hymnody, which
ought to be conspicious in every seminary curriculum. To this I
would add the history of church music as a special branch of musical
art, and I would push out beyond this, if possible, to include some
sketch of the general history of music as a whole, sufficient to give an
idea of its close relation to the history of civilization. I also beHeve
that there is room occassionally for analytical studies in particular
musical art-forms, especially the oratorio, but not forgetting the sym-
phony, the song and some instrumental forms. The lives of certain
musicians may sometimes be considered by themselves with much
profit, especially those that have left a positive impress upon sacred
music. From music it is natural to pass to several of its sister arts.
Almost every one of them had its origin in the Church, has given to
the Church much of its choicest energy, and has powerfully affected
the course of religious and moral development in the past. Architec-
ture is conspicuous in this regard, and probably all seminaries ought
to offer to their students some means of knowing by observation and
422 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
explanation the styles and forms that have been associated with the
Church in different periods, both for their historic value and for their
wealth of suggestion as to present-day church-building. Painting and
sculpture are almost equally valuable, and for the same reasons.
Reproductions of such art-work, also, are of the greatest use in religious
education in the Sunday school, and ministers cannot afford to be
absolutely ignorant about them. In short, it may almost be said that
no established discipline in the history of fine art can be named
that would not have utility if given a place in a seminary curriculum
at some time.
The objection to all such courses is, that, to make them worth while
in a scientific sense, they must be presented by an expert, must occupy
a long series of class-room hours, and must be entered into by the stu-
dent with such thoroughness that they seriously invade his time and
his energy for other studies. For a few of them, like the history of
hymnody, for example, it may be said that the profit is well worth all
it may cost. For others, however, I think that the way to bring them
in is rather under the head of " cultural " courses, in which the aim
is not so much to address the student's intellect and reason as to affect
his instinctive taste and feeling. The best good of a course of demon-
strations of oratorio music or of architectural masterpieces, for in-
stance, is not that which can be tested by an examination or set down
in note-books, but that unconscious awakening of the heart to artistic
beauty and meaning which may become a lifelong possession and joy.
Accordingly, I believe that most work in these directions should be
conducted somewhat informally, and with such an emphasis on the ex-
hibition of specimens that they may speak for themselves, and work
almost unaided that influence upon sensitiveness, upon imagination,
upon reverence and aspiration, that is in their power. There is hardly
a seminary that does not have professors who could add one or more
such cultural courses to their list with success, and in doing so would
establish a new link of sympathy between themselves and their stu-
dents. Handled in this way, such courses would escape the danger
of becoming too technical or too devoid of definite religious application,
and the close relation of students with their regular instructors would
encourage that questioning and discussion that make such studies
peculiarly profitable. The one point of greatest practical difficulty is
in the providing of specimens for use. All these involve considerable
monetary expenditure, yet every one of them can be justified as a part
of library equip-ment. For example, in these days the reproduction
of music by mechanical piano-players is advancing with startling rapid-
ARTISTIC STUDIES IN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 423
ity, and bids fair to be an educational appliance of the first impor-
tance. The reproduction of architectural and pictorial specimens in
the form of lantern-slides is already very common, and its pedagogical
application needs no explanation or defense. All enterprising semi-
naries should provide among their apparatus the means for the pre-
sentation of such specimens to its student5-, and should no more grudge
this outlay than it does v^^hat it spends for other tools of study. What-
ever is secured becomes a permanent possession, which, with suitable
care, will serve several generations of students.
Put as briefly and perhaps insistently as are these remarks, it is
likely that they will seem somewhat revolutionary and extreme. Yet
as was said at the outset, nothing has been suggested that has not had
some sort of trial somewhere. Indeed, the list might easily have been
made longer, especially if the whole discipUne of liturgies had been
included. The criticism that is most likely* is, that in the ordinary
seminary curriculum there is no time for all these things. I am not
so foolish as to hold that all of them should be required of all students.
Each institution must determine by experiment what can be made
effective, and most courses of this sort must be held as electives until
they have estabHshed their utiHty, if not always. Probably some
courses should be given only once in two or three years, alternating
with others, and should be open to students of all classes. This is an
obvious economy of effort for all concerned. No sensible person would
urge that the whole plan of seminary instruction should be remodeled
so as to make room for a large amount of art study, as if it were of equal
importance with exegesis or church history or dogmatics or pastoral
theology. All that is claimed is, that no seminary in these days can
afford to send out its students with absolutely no knowledge and no
sympathy in these directions, both for their personal sake and for the
sake of their ministerial effectiveness.
Let me expand this last clause a Uttle. The practical minister
needs development on the artistic or aesthetic side for his own sake,
because his work calls for a full-rounded personal culture. In the
long run, his influence will be measured by the magnitude of what he
is in himself, by the breadth of his sympathies, the depth of his feelings,
the elevation of his ideals. In this presence it is not necessary to argue
that the awakening of the aesthetic faculties is for all men indispensable
to these results. No possible acumen of the intellect, or furnishing of
the scientific memory, or even direction of the will or affections, if it
be unchastened and ungraced by the quickening of the imagination
and of the sense of beauty and fitness, can possibly make a well-bal-
424 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
anced character. How often has it proved that a mind of great ra-
tional and volitional power has plainly failed of its possible greatness
because it was too pragmatic and too unlovely in all its operations.
The truth involved in these assertions eludes final statement in words,
but no person of insight, I venture to think, will deny that there is
truth in them. If this be so, then it follows that theological education
cannot safely or justly overlook it. The means chosen to approach it
may vary greatly, but the aim in view does not vary, namely, to stir
in every student those faculties that have so much to do with making
him a broad and sensitive man.
The practical minister needs development on the aesthetic side for
the sake of his ministerial effectiveness, both because much of his rou-
tine work is essentially artistic in character and because the artistic
avenue of appeal to men generally is surely one of the most open and
most direct. It can hardly be said too often or too strongly that the
whole administration of public worship in all its varied forms is es-
sentially artistic in character, not because it happens to include artistic
features, but because liturgical action cannot help being an artistic
complex throughout. That many services are conspicuously un aes-
thetic in plan and in detail does not mean that nothing artistic enters
into them, but that the art in them is poor. In this great function of
ministerial duty many an unassuming man, without knowing it, is
finding the joy and reaping the reward of the true artist, though per-
haps he would be mystified if you were to tell him so. On the other
hand, many an earnest worker stumbles and fumbles through his vari-
ous liturgical acts simply because his artistic instinct is weak or un-
developed regarding them. Leadership in services of public worship
constitutes by far the major part of the entire routine public work of
the ministry, and hence it is not too much to say that any preparation
for the profession that does not provide artistic stimulus to the would-
be minister in his student days is woefully defective, since it is not
calling into action just those faculties that are to be most necessary
throughout his whole professional career. This thesis might be de-
fended and advanced at almost any length. But we must not fail to
say, in addition, that the avenue of appeal to men, through the capacity
of deUght and fascination for that which is finished, exquisite, and beau-
tiful, is really one of the best that is open to any social worker. It is
often said that in these days, and perhaps especially in this country,
the reverse of this is the fact. But we may venture to doubt the cor-
rectness of any analysis of any one who exercises social power if it
leaves out of account those qualities of his habitual modes of approach
ARTISTIC STUDIES IN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 425
to men that are inherently aesthetic. What is called " magnetism "
is often nothing but the instinct for aesthetic attack. The suscepti-
bility to what is beautiful is far more universal than some critics would
allow, usually because they make their definition of the beautiful too
narrow. And it may be soberly questioned whether any approach
to a man's personality is more direct and searching than this. This
is the reason why immoral art of every kind is so dangerous, but it is
also the assurance that artistic action or creation that is dominated
by a moral or spiritual purpose may hope to be successful and irresisti-
ble in the long run. The capacity of sympathy through the aesthetic
nature varies somewhat with the successive periods of life, but it is not
absent from any. Probably it becomes most conspicuous just as youth
merges in maturity — just the age at which the deepest spiritual im-
press for good or ill is usually made. Ought not our system of minis-
terial training to recognize this fact, and make provision for awaken-
ing and furnishing those faculties in the young minister that will enable
him to be effective in this way with those who are thus susceptible?
Allow me two more remarks. One concerns the attitude of the
faculties of our seminaries to this subject. It must be admitted that
the traditional atmosphere of some of these institutions is not evidently
favorable to lines of study like those here urged. Whatever of reluc-
tance to admit them, or even to regard them as desirable, is probably
on the part of those who control the work of instruction. I know
well how perplexing are the problems of theological pedagogy in these
days, and how indefinitely numerous are the demands put upon the
seminaries to adopt this or that feature into their curriculum.
It would be foolish to call for a large apportionment of time or for
great outlays upon new instructors or new apparatus for the presenta-
tion of the topics of which we have been speaking. But is it too much
to ask that the professors in our seminaries generally give serious con-
sideration to the question whether they cannot gradually do more to
cultivate and direct the aesthetic powers of their students, beginning
with perhaps but one experimental course, but taking pains that it
shall be vmderstood that this is but one among many that are in mind ?
Is it too much to ask that in various ways the treatment of established
subjects in the classrooms be made to include due reference to their
conspicuously artistic features? I suspect, for example, that there
have been various long courses in Church history in which there has
not been one sympathetic or illuminating mention of the extraordi-
nary influence in the Middle Ages that the fine arts exercised m the
whole matter of popular religion or of the equally extraordinary influence
426 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
that hymnody has exerted in the last two centuries. I suspect, too,
that there have been courses in homiletics that have not once brought
out in full the conspicuous fact that preaching is above all else a piece
of literary and expressional fine art, all the more striking as such be-
cause it is so complex in structure. I suspect that there have been
vi^hole courses of lectures on the dogmatic and philosophical side of
theology that have not once brought out the conspicuous fact that while
the theology of the schools may be formal and logical in its character,
that of the people is always instinctive and really artistic. These
impressions may be unwarranted, but if there is any truth in them,
there is a call for a new attitude toward this whole class of subjects
on the part of theological faculties. That such subjects have not been
made more of in seminaries is constantly charged to the lack of time.
It ought to be made clear that it is not due to any lack of interest.
My other closing remark concerns the way in which studies like
those here advocated are brought before the minds of students. I
beheve that they should usually be offered as electives, so that taking
them may not be by compulsion, but as far as possible con amore.
Yet care should be exercised that their real importance and practical
value be not misapprehended. The danger about all studies of this
class, especially when presented in demonstrative or " cultural "
courses, is, that they shall appear to the student as more entertaining
than serious, more as a diversion than as directly instructive. To
guard against misuse, therefore, they should be somewhat explained
beforehand, and great pains should be taken at intervals in them to
make plain their bearing upon practical ministerial work. The
student who already has a craving for them will not be slow to perceive
their importance, but help will be required for men who have not yet
awakened to the need of artistic information and sympathy. This
help should come from various quarters, if possible, not altogether from
whoever is deputed to give artistic instruction, because from him it will
seem to be special pleading. My own experience is that the average
student is far from being unready to appreciate and appropriate work
in artistic directions, but his vague impressions and desires need con-
firmation and enHghtenment, so that whatever he attempts may seem
dignified and worthy, not a pastime or an eccentric crotchet, but a
serious part of his self-equipment for his life-work.
THE GENERAL ALLIANCE OF WORKERS
WITH BOYS
THE GENERAL ALLIANCE OF WORKERS WITH BOYS
THE BOY IN THE COUNTRY
The Problem of the Country Boy
REV. HERBERT A. JUMP
PASTOR BOWDON COLLEGE CHURCH, BRUNSWICK, MAINE
When the Aknighty created the first man he made the world signifi-
cant; when he created the first boy he made it interesting. If man
was molded from the dust of the earth, the boy was compounded out
of dust and electricity. The electricity in him constitutes the boy-
problem, and this problem besets the village, no less than the city. The
fact, moreover, that two thirds of the people of the United States is a
country population, i. e., lives in communities of less than eight
thousand population, attaches special importance to the problem of
the rural boy.
This boy, considered as a restless perplexity in breeches, is not essen-
tially different from his city cousin. Heredity operates beyond the munic-
ipal fire-limits, and environment exercises influence without aid from
an arc light. The village tavern and the city saloon are twin devils, and
foolish parents are to be found everywhere. Thepueritia pagana is perhaps
less flexible and alert, slower to choose and act, than the pueritia urhana,
for its world is not so furiously a world of motion as that which beats
upon the sensorium of the city boy. Its eye rests upon a panoramic
rather than a kinetoscopic environment. Also, it is less socially adapt-
able, for it has rubbed elbows only with other boys like itself, and the
same kind of " rubbing " having gone on now for many generations, the
" elbows " are instinctively familiar with one another. And it is less
breathlessly ambitious, less touched with the fever for success. It is
unlike the city species, in that it is more acquainted with quiet than with
change. Self-reUant when lost in the woods, the country boy is awkward
or terror-stricken in a crowd; the " Rube " is a stock character in cur-
rent drama comedy. His monotonous environment fails to develop in
1 The papers following were read al the convention of the General Alliance of Workers with Boys.
The directors of the General Alliance of Workers with Boys decided to celebrate their decen-
nial by holding their annual convention in connection with that of the Religious Education Asso-
ciation. The Alliance, like the Association, is international and non-sectarian. It enrolls several
hundred men and women, most of whom are salaried and volunteer leaders of many varieties of
social work with boys. The organ of the Alliance is a quarterly magazine. Work with Boys, pub-
lished in Fall River. In addition to the formal programme of the Alliance as a department, there
were reunions of those interested in special forms of work and excursions to social institutions for
boys in Boston.
429
430 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
him as much institutional fertility as it does manual facility. He is less
an inventor and supporter of clubs than his city cousin. His vitality
suffers from scarcity of boyish avenues along which to travel; and he is,
in consequence, often an adult before his time. Peril comes to the city
boy from the exhilaration of positive wrong-doing; to the country boy
from the drifting possibilities of a nature where the physical has out-
stripped in development the imaginative and idealistic. The one does
too many things that are bad; the other does not attempt enough things,
either good or bad. You redeem the city boy by damming up the
sluices into which his life-currents ought not to flow; but to save the
country boy, you dig new channels into which his surging strength can
be directed. Roughly speaking, the country boy corresponds to an
earlier or tribal stage of social evolution, before the great city was
invented; and his defects are corrected by bringing to bear upon him
precisely those socializing iniluences of which the city boy has a surfeit.
Let us hasten at this point to disabuse ourselves of a notion popularly
accepted, the idea, viz., that contact with nature has, per se, amoral
significance. Walking over grassy fields, finding song-sparrows' nests,
and visiting the haunts of the retiring orchid — which are possibihties
in the country boy's Hfe — ought to give him a saintward impulse, so
the nature-study enthusiast says. But they do not. Even when the
country boy does have toward nature that contemptuous ignorance
begotten of famiharity, he receives from her little if any moral dynamic.
A badly started boy goes to the bad as readily in a sequestered valley
as in a turbulent metropoHs. Suppose one hundred thousand children
in Chicago cannot tell a daisy from a violet, as has been claimed; they
are not more likely to cheat in examinations on that account. And
when you have transplanted them into the country and filled them with
flower-lore, you have but taught them flowers, and flowers are not ethics.
In one of the prettiest villages of Maine, a hill top town commanding a
view of the Presidential Range of the White Mountains, it was discovered
that definite influences were corrupting the morals of the boys. At
length the source of the infection was unearthed, and behold! in this
quiet town a full-fledged academy of sin was holding regular sessions
under the leadership of a foul-minded but masterful boy. A group of
lads at the age when the gang-spirit was dominant had been organized
with all the delicious accompaniments of a secret society to learn " the
things a fellow ought to know to be a man." Smoking, profanity, and
obscene stories were not the worst courses in the curriculum of this
" Fagin's school." In a community where every prospect pleased,
only the boys were vile. This dark picture, however, ought not to be
THE BOY IN THE COUNTRY 431
left unrelieved. The salvation of a boy consists in the right satisfaction
of his interests, and when a " gang " is wisely " chaperoned " (to use
a word of Dr. Forbush's), its acquisitive and competitive activities find
in the world of nature a rich exploitable field. Under such circum-
stances, the country boy begins to enjoy his advantage of contact with
nature. But, alas! how rarely does the gang find its " chaperon "!
The most alarming feature of the country boy problem is that for the
most part it is as yet a problem unattacked. The city boy has long
been the object of study and reforming endeavor. His psychology,
physiology, sociology, and soteriology have been pretty well w^orked out.
It really is a privilege to be a bad boy in a city nowadays. The candi-
date for redemptive work has so much done for him by countless
philanthropic agencies, that the perplexity must be, forsooth! to decide
by which particular means he will let himself be " rescued." With the
country boy, on the other hand, all is different. He has neither been
systematically studied nor has altruistic enthusiasm annexed him to its
province. For him there are no boys' clubs, gymnasiums, game centers,
free baths, juvenile libraries, social settlements, or trade schools. For
him exists no w^ealthy patron w^ho will outdo Providence in generosity —
for the gifts of Providence are limited by wisdom. For him there is none
of the proud glamour accompanying the consciousness that he is a " cata-
logued case." Because his needs are not as sensational as those of the
city boy, the morally backward boy in the rural town has been left to
feel that society never cares for him until he has broken some law, and
then he experiences in the policeman or constable only her severe and
punishing hand. " For many years," writes Mr. Riis, " grass has been
considered sacred in New York city; only recently have boys begun to
be so considered." The towns are slower than the metropolis; the
majority of them neglect both grass and boys, and even the most pro-
gressive communities spend more money printing signs for the protection
of the greensward than they invest in conscious ministry to their coming
young men. But the inertia of even our daredevil American optimism
will ere long be roused and broken; the advancing army of social
progress will not dare to leave this unreduced fortress of the country boy
threatening its rear; around the rural lad, as well as round the city lad,
must be flung the arms of a wise and upbuilding friendliness.
The " promoter " is a newly evolved functionary in the industrial
world who has quickly justified his existence. He is the individual
who builds money-power into corporations, who organizes financial
elements into a unified, working aggregate. Something or some person
must be found capable of fulfilling the " promoter " function for the
432 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
boy-power of our country towns. There are agencies already on the
field, to be sure, but they are not coping with the problem. Either new
agencies must be devised, or else the now-existing agencies must be
increased in efficiency.
Always the home is the mainstay of hope. But the boy who possesses
the right kind of Christian home is not part of the boy problem, and
the boy who makes the problem is generally one who has no " home,"
in the spiritual sense of the term, and often none in the material sense.
What shall be done for the homeless boy, and who will do it ?
Why should not the school building in our towns be generally appro-
priated as a boys' rendezvous? In each village, let a system of self-
governing clubs be organized with athletic, chivalric, patriotic, parha-
mentary, or social interests, adapted to various ages and susceptible to
the impetus of competition. Each club will be under the supervision
of an adult, mature enough to hold before the boys' minds unyielding
ideals of manly living, but young enough to understand and forgive
recurring neglects of such ideals. These club leaders will naturally
meet from time to time for conference with the general superintendent,
who will bean interested citizen, a teacher, or, least desirably, a minister.
In these clubs, the country boy will be first of all socialized. He will
enjoy, also, the rich gains following upon supervised athletics, and mean-
while, and quietly, the companionship of noble standards is molding
him into their image.
THE CHIVALRIC IDEA IN WORK WITH BOYS
REV. FRANK L. MASSECK
PASTOR CHURCH OF OUR FATHER, SPENCER, MASSACHUSETTS; NATIONAL KING OF
THE KNIGHTS OF KING ARTHUR
Every person who comes into intimate contact with boys, whether
as parent, teacher, or friend, reahzes the truth, emphasized in GuHck's
" Studies of Adolescence," the " spontaneous tendency of boys in pubes-
cent years to develop social and political organizations." Mr. Sheldon,
in "The Institutional Activities of American Children," shows that
the tendency to spontaneously imitate every form of adult organization
is manifest before the age of ten, and that only about thirty per cent of the
large number of children whom he observed had not belonged to some
such organization. After ten, the boys cease to imitate adult societies,
and tend to form social units characteristic of the lower stages of evolu-
tion, pirates, robbers, soldiers, savages, where the strongest and boldest
is the leader. At this point is found the danger of this instinctive ten-
dency. President Hall says: " Especially in city life, the boy is divorced
from the steadying laws of recapitulation which insure emergence in due
season into a higher state, and so is all the more plastic, helpless, dis-
oriented, and in need of succor. In decadent country communities,
with fev/er and feebler offspring, with lax notions of parental discipline,
such associations often break out in hoodlumism, and in many unsettled
portions of the country a semi-savage state of society results. Under
all circumstances the boys left to themselves tend to disorder and trival-
ity. Hence, in large part, comes the immeasurable waste of adolescent
hfe."
These are the facts. What is now proposed as a remedy? Presi-
dent Hall says: " All social Ufe should be organized about youth like
placenta, and should restore, if possible, all the lost phyletic elements
that are needful, while adult leaders should strive to ripen that deep and
lasting friendship which the young so readily develop, with hfelong and
enthusiastic gratitude for those that really serve them. Every adolescent
boy ought to belong to some club or society marked by such secrecy as
is compatible with safety. Something esoteric, mysterious, a symbolic
badge, countersign, a lodge and its equipment, and perhaps other things
owned in common, give a real basis for comradeship, and cultivate
a peculiar form of group-honor. The prime purpose which should
determine every choice of matter and method is moral, viz. so to direct
433
434 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
intelligence and will as to secure the largest measure of social service,
advance altruism, reduce selfishness, and thus advance the higher
cosmic order. Youth loves combat. Its very best safeguard and its
highest ideal is honor, and this has its best expression in what may be
called the ethnic Bible of the Saxon race in its adolescent stage, the
literature of chivalry. I am convinced that there is nothing more whole-
some for the material of Enghsh study than that of the early mythic
period in Western Europe. I refer to the literature of the Arthuriad
and the San grail. We have here a vast body of ethical material, char-
acters that are almost colossal in their proportions, incidents thrilling
and dramatic to a degree that stirs the blood and thrills the nerves. It
teaches the highest reverence for womanhood, piety, valor, loyalty,
courage, munificence, justice, and obedience. The very life-blood of
chivalry is heroism."
This is the ideal remedy proposed. Twelve years ago, Dr. Forbush
began a practical experiment at realizing this ideal, and President Hall
says, " This idealized court of King Arthur is the very best form for
this age." It is interesting to know that others, unconscious of what
Dr. Forbush has already so well done, have had visions of a similar
work, and made some progress towards realization. Only the other
day a letter came into my hands, from a clergyman in Chicago, who had
almost worked out a practical scheme before he learned of the Knights
of King Arthur. In England, Dr. Paton has evolved the " Boys' Life
Brigade," in which he endeavors to teach boys to develop, relieve, and
save life, rather than to destroy, which is the tendency, at least in the
various forms of military organizations. Out of this. Dr. Paton had
come to propose a " Court of Honor," which would seek to develop the
highest life and aspiration in the heart of the boys. These and various
other attempts to the same end show us so clearly that the prophecy of
the reign of Arthur is being realized in our time. Many of these
workers are now allying themselves with the Knights.
But now comes the practical question. How does the chivalric idea
work out in practice? For reply, I will give you some illustrations
taken from the records of our Castles. The oldest living Castle is
Roseville No. 44, in Newark, New Jersey. The leader is a lady. For
nearly nine years she has been working with the boys who have
successively come under her influence. By means of drills of various
kinds, and with games, the boys have been attracted to the meetings.
They have helped buy a carpet for the church, and now are at work
on the mortgage. Cake and cream have frequently been enjoyed.
The object, " Boys for Christ," has ever been kept in view, and tact-
THE CHIVALRIC IDEA IN WORK WITH BOYS 435
fully a word has now and then been spoken. Miss Jones writes, " It is
difficult to measure the growth of character. But I believe no good
influence has been lost. I have seen the boys made purer by meeting
together as a K. O. K. A."
A Baptist minister in Nashville, Tennessee, writes, " I do very little
preaching to the boys. I think the best thing is to tie them to the church
and myself, and let them feel that about the church may be found the
most wholesome life for a boy. I am aiming at forming a bond, rather
than piling up statistics as to how many moral lessons I swathed them
with. I believe this course was amply justified when, at the close of a
special series of meetings which I myself conducted, and in which I
asked the special sympathy and support of the Castle, fourteen of the
members united with the church. But that is not all. We supported
a boy in school last year, furnishing him also with books. We believe
in the K. O. K. A. and wish it many summers."
Another pastor, in a town where all the influences are opposed to
church membership, and in a church which had never had a male under
twenty-one unite with it, after three years of work, saw four of the boys
take their positions at the altar, one of whom afterwards entered the
Divinity School, and will shortly be ordained as pastor of a large church.
Another of the group has been for four years superintendent of the Sun-
day school. These results were accomplished in the face of ridicule,
derision, and scorn.
Ministers and teachers all over the country confess that with the
Castle they are able effectively to reach boys who could not be touched
by the Sunday school, or any form of young people's religious organiza-
tions.
In a Httle town of northern Vermont, where the boys were notori-
ously vulgar, obscene, and impure, the Baptist and Congregational pas-
tors united and formed a Castle. In less than a year the influence
of that little group of lads had almost purified the entire boy-life.
Cigarette-smoking ceased. Profanity was seldom heard. Impurity
was driven out of sight. So great was the transformation, that business
men on the street commented upon the fact, and showed their ap-
preciation of the wonderful work by receptions to the members of the
Castle, these unexpected attentions serving still further to increase the
good influence of the order.
THE CIVIC IDEA IN WORK WITH BOYS
MYRON T. SCUDDER
PRINCIPAL, NEW PALTZ NORMAL SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY
The civic ideals of any nation are greatly influenced by the geo-
graphic conditions of the territory inhabited by that nation. Guyot says
that because of the continental structure of Asia, the civilization of the
races on that continent became arrested in their development. The
civic ideals of its races are archaic; they reached a stable equilibrium
centuries ago, and are hopelessly ineffectual from progress. With
Europe the case is different. For its physical features, including so many
peninsulas well guarded by moimtain barriers, yet permitting easy inter-
course by water, make it " specially fitted to foster the formation of
distinct nationaUties, each developing in a special direction." It
supports strongly centralized governments or monarchies, in which
pohtical individualism and a spirit of altruism could have but Httle play.
But for America, particularly in the " noble domain of the United
States," the geographer claims a grand function. This country, because
of its extraordinary wealth of resources and physical features (great
reaches of country interlaced by navigable rivers with no serious moun-
tain barriers), tends to create mutual interests among all the peoples who
come here, fosters internal commerce, unites rather than separates
peoples, and checks the formation of local nationalities. America is
therefore the Amalgamator of races, the continent of altruistic democ-
racy.
Thus, imavoidably, are bred civic ideals differing from those of other
nations, and vastly more compHcated for the individual citizen, and
demanding a higher degree of pohtical intelhgence. Into these civic
ideals, the youth of our country must be most carefully inducted. The
task is herculean, and all the more so because of the unique structure
and composition of the national government. In a great nation com-
posed as this is of a number of small nations, the principle of local
autonomy and state sovereignty necessarily clashes with the principle of
a centraHzed government at Washington. To insure survival and strong
growth, our youth must be prepared to participate intelhgently, loyally,
unselfishly, and honestly in the struggle between these two principles.
But how shall this be done ? The educators of youth have an extraor-
dinarily difficult task on hand, and unfortunately the pedagogy of the
subject is not yet worked out. The teaching of a very intricate subject
436
THE CIVIC IDEA IN WORK WITH BOYS 437
is further complicated by the necessity of considering the laws of mental
growth and the nature of the youthful mind as it passes rapidly through
the various phases of its development. Perhaps we shall eventually
devise a scheme for teaching civics, based on the historic order of devel-
opment of governmental machinery, leading from the simple one-man
power of primitive man, up through a simple democracy like that of the
Indian tribes, to the more compHcated intertribal relations, not yet
representative in form, shown in the stories of Siegfried, Ulysses, etc.,
on to the feudal system and then to colonial government, where the
principle of representation becomes a necessity, and following this by
village or county organization, finishing up with municipal government.
Such a scheme certainly opens up a field of great promise and of un-
bounded research and work for framers of courses of study!
The American boy, then, and the American girl too must from the '
very start be made acquainted in one way or another with American
civic ideals, and, what is more, they should have early experience in
devising laws and ordinances for self-government, as well as practice in
obeying and enforcing the same. While this is of special importance,
because of our republican form of government, it is also an essential in
the development of the kind of character needed by American youth.
In this country, we feel the necessity of appealing to the individual's
own will in order really to govern him. We see that "self-government
makes a man strong and fit for life, while will, coercion, or government
from without renders him unfit for self -regulation." Wise government
of our youth, that is, a government in which they themselves may really
participate, will tend to establish habits of self-control, obedience to law,
and thoughtfulness of others' welfare. Is it not therefore, both absurd
and wrong to rear the future citizens of a representative government
under a form of school government which is little better than despotism
(for where in the world is there a more arbitary rule than is shown in the
school-rooms in which young Americans spend so many of the forma-
tive years of their lives?) — a despotism which at least has too often
failed as utterly as any despotism can fail to develop in the individual
that rational sense of responsibility for himself and for others which is
one very important safeguard of democratic institutions?
Each school then, and we may say, club or other similar organization,
may profitably seek to provide not only an object-lesson in the forms of
government, but actual practice in exercising the rights and duties of
citizenship. Sporadic attempts in this direction have made their way
from time to time to pubhc notice, coming generally from some college,
like, for instance, the once far-famed Amherst plan, but it was not until
the valuable lesson taught by the George Junior Republic, and by the
438 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
splendidly conceived idea of the school city, that the movement for
actual participation in government came to be established on a substan-
tial and permanent basis.
It is to the school city in particular that your attention is invited, as
being in many respects the best type of junior representative government
for both schools and clubs, and as best illustrating our topic, " The
Civic Idea in Work with Boys." Devised by Mr. Wilson L. Gill now
living in Germantown, Pennsylvania, it has steadily made its way into
hundreds of places in both hemispheres, and lately the Board of Edu-
cation of Philadelphia has adopted it as an essential feature of school
administration in that city, as indeed Cuba had done three years ago.
Through the various departments and activities of this organization, the
entire aim is to build up healthy civic ideals and to afford practice in
carrying them out, and to effect this, the genius and resources both of
pupils and faculty are taxed to the utmost. Summarizing, then, the
underlying purposes of this politico-social educational organization, and
noting that the educational principle involved throughout is, invariably,
" learning by doing," we may say that it is admirably adapted —
1. To make boys and girls acquainted with the practical workings
of the poHtical machinery of representative government.
2. To train them in the actual use of the ballot as a means for really
modifying their environment, thus establishing their confidence in and
respect for this instrument for recording the popular will.
3. To develop the idea of social service and responsibility, as well
as to inculcate a lofty civic spirit.
The theory of government and the complexity of administrative
machinery cannot begin to be appreciated by our citizens unless they
receive much practical training. Text-book study is astonishingly inade-
quate. Come face to face with any phase of political or governmental
procedure, and see if it is an easy matter to describe step by step the
modus operandi of carrying it into execution. It is small wonder that a
population so inadequately trained as ours can be easily duped or its
will thwarted and its ballot rendered powerless by unscrupulous politi-
cians. It is not remarkable, either, that with many people confidence
in the value of the ballot has been weakened. But let a generation or
two of our young people come up through a system where day after day
they find that their ballots do amount to something, and are continually
modifying their environment, and they will not be so likely to say, when
they reach the age of twenty-one, and are called on to participate in the
government of the nation, " What is the use of voting? We can do
nothing. It is all cut and dried for us, and everything predetermined by
bosses and manipulators before we can get into the voting-booth."
THE BOY IN THE CITY
A Country School and Camp for City Boys
MR. EDWARD A. BENNER
PRINCIPAL WELLESLEY SCHOOL FOR BOYS, WELLESLEY, MASSACHUSETTS
In offering the present paper I wish to be understood as giving the
results of my own experience, and I do not desire to appear as an advo-
cate of a special plan of an education which, under other conditions and
in other hands, might fail to realize as much good as the present in-
stance may seem to indicate.
The Wellesley Camp was undertaken seven years ago, on Lake
Wentworth, in New Hampshire, and is now permanently settled on
the east shore of Ossipee Lake, in New Hampshire. Nowhere has
nature a greater charm, nor anywhere are her features more inspiring
than here where woods, a level expanse of water, the mountains and
the plain, constitute the perfection of natural beauty and offer a per-
manent inspiration and joy to the mind. The contrast of such scenes
with the dungeon life of the city is very impressive upon the mind of
a boy. He never saw before, it may be, so wide a sky.
The Wellesley Camp has always required of the campers a certain
amount of work. Life is reduced to simple elements. There we can-
not press a button and have a machine do the rest. \Ye do not think
it well to have an Ethiopian in a white suit wait upon the whims of
the boys. Under tactful and inspiring men, boys love to work, and
the instances are rare in which they do not submit to it willingly. The
rooms must be swept, the verandas kept clear, the grounds pohced
and improved, the wood cut and brought, water carried perhaps from
the spring, vegetables prepared for the cook, tables waited upon,
boats calked and painted, a flag-staff cut and trimmed. The Welles-
ley campers do all these things, and they like it.
In educating resourceful men, nothing has ever taken the place
of the farm. We imitate it feebly in our sloyd schools, basketry, pyrog-
raphy, arts and crafts devices; but it was nature and the farm that
made the men. No system of heroic play like basket-ball or football
can equally discipUne the spirit. Men and boys grow strong by the
submission of the soul to difficult and sometimes hateful labor. A
camp and a school, too, if possible should so instruct boys that they
would feel it a point of honor to attack any kind of necessary work.
Does anybody remember Xenophon's story of the Anabasis, and the
439
440 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
joyous leadership of the Young Pretender? There is in it a passage
that is fine for every boy to dig out of the Greek by himself It is
where Cyrus's wagons stuck in the mud. When he saw the troops
working too leisurely to extricate them, he turned as in rage, and com-
manded the proudest nobles about him to get the wagons out. Here,
says Xenophon, was a chance to see discipline. Tearing off their
splendid cloaks where each man stood, they hurled themselves in their
rich garments down the incline as one would run for victory; and,
leaping with their chains and bracelets into the mud, lifted and lugged
the wagons out. That should be the spirit of our well-bom and high-
bred American boys.
In all discussions of the deterioration of American citizenship
through the immigration of imdesirable foreigners, we are assured
that our American ideals in education, business, and social life are
able to assimilate and redeem this vast mass of strangers. Not Ameri-
can ideals alone, but change of climate and soil and the necessity of
adapting themselves to new conditions so that they may earn a living,
produce such a mighty renewal in these foreigners who come to us.
Change of scene in the limits of our own country has done the same
for the sons and daughters of the East, who have made their homes
in the middle or far West. Any family or race, kept for many genera-
tions in the cradle of its origin, inevitably decUnes. Our own people
are kept progressive and vital largely by the mingling of elements
widely separated in locality and manners. A given brand of wheat
or potatoes will yield satisfactory crops in a given locality for a series
of years, and then the seed will run out. The same grain or tuber,
transplanted to a different locality, will often produce beyond behef.
The analogy is significant. Physicians employ the fact when they
send sick people to California "for a change of air." But who rea-
lizes that the same " change of air " may be of inestimable value to
young persons during their period of growth ?
The chief result of the change physically seemed to be a great in-
crease of vitality. They seemed more aUve than when they came,
abler to do things, more willing to attack a difficult labor. This im-
provement was especially marked in the case of one or two delicate
boys. One, for example, was so frail that his mother had hardly per-
mitted him to draw a deep breath, lest some injury should result.
He became so rugged that after a few weeks he was able to dance up and
down the five-mile cUmb of Chocorua, ten miles in all, Hke a moun-
tain goat.
But the most significant result of this close contact with nature
THE BOY IN THE CITY 441
is a moral one. The whole scheme seems to make the boys more
serious and more m.anly. The appeal to justice and honor comes
closer to them than it did before. To sit by a little camp-fire and
view the immeasurable darkness around and above; to be within a
forest where one might be lost; to see the spread of deep, engulfing
water; to feel the vast solitude aroimd, all these make a boy feel his
insignificance, and nothing is better for a boy. Especially is this true
of the city boy, who is too apt to consider himself the model and cyno-
sure of the world.
The studies are arranged so that the afternoons can be given up
to out-door occupation. Rowing or sailing with the masters, a great
variety of excursions by boat or afoot, mountain-climbing, and occa-
sional coaching trips, diversified by the various games on the play-
ground, form the diversions of the boys. To build a camp-fire in a
big stone oven, to cook potatoes in it, are among the supreme joys of
boys 12 and 14 years old and under.
The condition most favorable for study and for growth is the silence,
and the absence of artificial distractions. In the wilderness of the
great Ossipee there are no footlights and no kinematoscopes. The
" elevated " no longer thunders its din into your ears, and the rare
whistle of the locomotive is faint and far. No discord enters to mar
the sweet sights and sounds of nature. The din and excitement of
the city bear hard upon children, although they often appear to pass
unnoticed by them.
The excitements of city life are indurating to the intellect and the
disposition. No child can steadily do his best when subjected to their
influence, and positive injury is likely to result unless relief and pro-
tection are afi'orded them.
The simple Hfe is needed most of all by children to produce cahn-
ness of nerve and poise of character. The decisions of the mind are
clearer amid simple conditions. The greatest hope of city-bred chil-
dren is to give them deep drafts of country Ufe; to engage their activi-
ties in the labors incident to it, and to give them free scope and en-
couragement in the observations and studies of nature.
THE JUVENILE CITY LEAGUE OF NEW YORK
MR. WILLIAM C. LANGDON
PRATT INSTITUTE, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
The Juvenile City League is an organization of street-boys in New
York City with the purpose of training them toward a true attitude of
citizenship. It does this by getting them to look out for such simple
matters in connection with the city departments as are appropriate
for boys living in a city; for example, keeping their streets clean; the
removal of dead cats and dogs; the waste of water at the faucets in
the tenement hallway sinks; miscellaneous spitting; the proper separa-
tion and disposal of garbage, ashes, and rubbish.
The work was started in June, 1903, in a district of the West Side
of the borough of Manhattan (New York proper). It originated
with Miss Catherine S. Leverich, chairman of the Committee on
Streets of the Woman's Municipal League of New York. She has
raised the money for the work, and in fact has personally contributed
most of it herself. The speaker has been in charge of the work as
its director, having the assistance, at various times, of from one to
four workers in each of the league's four districts.
Miss Leverich got her idea for the league from Colonel George E.
Waring, who instituted clubs amongst the children of New York to
interest and guide them in helping to keep the streets clean. The
idea of the present league at the start was to revive these street-clean-
ing clubs with the development of enlarging the scope of the work to
include matters concerning other city departments, — the board of
health, the department of tenement-houses, of water, of charities,
as well as the department of street-cleaning. The question was.
How can the boys of New York be brought to look at civic duties
from the right point of view — that of doing them — and to feel that
the city is a great home community and business firm, in which, when
they reach the proper age, they will be partners; that, taken literally,
they are to be members of the corporation of the city of New York.
In answer, the Juvenile City League set itself to work out by experi-
ment such a scheme of civic work for the boys of New York City as
might be wholesome in character and adaptable to the varying con-
ditions— local, financial, racial — of the different neighborhoods in all
the five boroughs of Greater New York.
The athletic life is the boy's normal state of existence. The proper
442
THE JUVENILE CITY LEAGUE OF NEW YORK 443
purpose of the league, therefore, is not to make of its members ab-
sorbed little civic specialists, but to make the boy's natural athletic
life develop into good citizenship. The league has spent much of
its time and energy in athletics. Baseball, basket-ball, and boxing
have predominated. For e.xample, last summer we had a regular
baseball league organized, which played off a series of sixty-four games.
Each team represented one block. Each block had to sign its players,
and professional regulations were pretty closely adhered to. At first
the games very much resembled a vigorous debating tournament,
the subjects of discussion being the umpire's decisions, and of course
every game ended in a free fight, " to prove it." But by the time the
summer was half over, the umpire's decision, never mind how ob-
jectionable, was never questioned, and even after the last, the cham-
pionship game, there was no disturbance.
The civic instruction is given principally, through a series of cards,
which are issued to the members of the league about once in three
weeks. The cards are 7 by 9 inches in size, of good lasting material, and
have a hole near the top to hang them on the wall. The subjects so
far treated are:
1. Keep your street clean.
2. Take care of your garbage.
3. Colonel George E. Waring.
4. Put only ashes in your ash-can.
5. Have gentlemanly manners.
6. Tie up rubbish in bundles.
7. Help clean away the snow.
8. Report dead animals for removal.
These cards give a few simple directions as to what to do; then,
under the word " Because," printed in large letters, brief reasons
therefor, and finally, in smaller type, a paragraph of pertinent informa-
tion on the subject; as, for example, in No. 2, what becomes of the
garbage, how it is taken away and made into marketable products,
or, in No. 4, how the ashes are taken to Riker's Island to make land
for the city at a saving of probably $2,000 per acre. At the bottom
of every card is the suggestion, " Keep this card carefully. Hang
it up in your home." The third card in the series gives a short account
of the life of Colonel Waring, with a portrait produced from " Street-
Cleaning and Its Effects," by permission of Doubleday, Page, and Com-
pany, and an estimate of his work quoted from an address by the
present commissioner, John McGaw Woodbury. These cards are
prepared with the assistance of the experts of the departments con-
444 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
cerned, and usually had the benefit of the criticism of the commis-
sioner before being printed. The effort has been to make them as
simple as possible, but absolutely correct.
Distributed to the boys through their gang-leaders and club captains,
these cards were valued by the boys and by their families, and they
were kept. In certain specific instances we know of cards that have
been kept in the homes for over a year, for over a year and a half.
For example, when it was deemed advisable to have a reissue of some
ear her card, frequently boys have come up and said, " I have that.
I have Nos. i, 2, 3,. and 5. Can I get 4?"
The effectiveness of the work is considerable. For example, take
card No. i, " Keep your street clean," when first issued, the boys
would keep their block quite immaculate for about two weeks — the
average lifetime of their civic enthusiasm for one particular thing.
Then it would be time to issue card No. 2. But there was almost
always a decided general improvement, such that the foreman of the
street-cleaning department would notice.
The league is now concentrating its attention upon the establish-
ment of work of this character permanently in the city's educational
system. Private money can well work out the scheme and devise methods
on a unit basis, but private money cannot of course carry such work
on any scale sufficiently large to accomplish substantial results in the
civic training of the boyhood of the city. How can this work be car-
ried on in the pubhc schools? No argument is needed on the point
that the board of education is the proper agency to carry on this work.
It is pubhc work; it is educational work; the schools already have, in
large measure, the working force and equipment for much of the work
in their teachers and playgrounds and roof-gardens. None the less,
to be practicable, to stand any chance of adoption, the scheme pre-
sented to the board of education must be one which will not require
any material change in the curriculum, will not add to the labors of
the already over-worked teachers, and will not entail very much addi-
tionaFexpense.
FEDERATING CHURCH WORK FOR BOYS IN LARGE CITIES
PROFESSOR EDWIN J. HOUSTON, Ph. D.
PRESIDENT OF THE BOYS' BROTHERHOOD OF PHILADELPHIA; PRESIDENT OF THE
PHILADELPHIA ALLIANCE OF WORKERS WITH BOYS
Church work among boys will be greatly improved by its intelligent
federation. This federation should not only begin in the Sunday
school of each church, but should, I think, begin in each class of the
Sunday school.
Regarding the Sunday school of each church as a unit, this unit
properly consists of a number of smaller units consisting of the separate
classes. The best work to be accompHshed will depend to a great ex-
tent upon the intelUgence and care that have been exercised in forming
such classes. Instead of leaving the membership of each class a matter
of chance, as is unfortunately too often done, the proper selection of its
members should be regarded as a matter of the greatest importance.
This selection should include the important question of age, mental
ability and social position, this last consideration being handled del-
icately. As far as possible, the members of a Sunday school class
should be selected from the same type of boys. Of course, this will
not always be possible, but it is at least advisable.
The object of carefully selecting the members of each class is for
the purpose of associating together in each class boys who will be as
nearly as possible associated together during the week-days in their
work, in their games, exercises, etc. In all classes where such a unit
is established, the work of the Sunday school will go on much more
smoothly, the attendance will be better, and the interest in the work
will be greatly increased.
The proper imits having been formed in the separate classes, an
endeavor should then be made to federate the work of these classes in
each Sunday school. Limiting my remarks now to the question of
the boys' side of the school, I think it would be advisable, as far as
possible, to establish such a federation of classes in the school as will
permit some of the boys taking part in the management of the school,
that is, forming its ofl&cers.
After the work of federation in the Sunday school has been effected,
the more important question arises of federating the boys' work imder-
taken in each church throughout the city. This federation can either
be denominational or interdenominational. So far as boys' work is
445
446 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
concerned, I think it will be found that the advantages will lie mainly
on the side of some kind of interdenominational federation.
All successful work for the betterment of the growing boy, whether
undertaken by the church or by organization from outside the church,
must necessarily be based on the boy's peculiarities or characteristics.
I will refer only to some of the more important of these.
1. The boy must be provided with playmates or co-workers. Call
them what you will, they are what the boy calls his crowd or gang.
The boy is not a solitary individual, but likes crowds. These he will
find; so that it is of prime importance, in the first place, to provide for
him a safe crowd of playfellows. In all locaHties, especially in large
cities, it is by no means an easy matter to provide unobjectionable
playmates. It is unsafe, however, to leave such selection to the boys
themselves. The best work for boys is that which carefully considers
this need.
2. The boy likes to take part in any work that is undertaken on
his behalf. The most successful work is that in which the boy him-
self takes a large part. In such cases, however, the limitations of
childhood must be carefully borne in mind. In other words, the work
must be properly directed by adults, who constitute the court of final
resort for all cases the boys themselves are unable properly to handle.
3. The greatest need of the growing boy is to afford him some
opportunity for expending that wonderful excess of energy with which
nature has supplied him, and which is absolutely necessary for his
continued successful growth. As you all know, one of the best marked
characteristics of the growing boy is his restless activity. He is fairly
bubbling over with energy, too often misdirected, and generally thought-
lessly expended. It is this characteristic of boyhood that makes the
boy so undesirable a companion to all who fail to understand him.
But I think it needs no argument to prove that the greatest part of
what passes with many as the natural wickedness or innate depravity
of boys is only the necessity that exists for the boy to indulge in what
I have ventured to call " physiological explosions." Such explosions,
or excessive expenditures of energy, are absolutely necessary for his
proper growth, and so far from regarding them as evidences of total
depravity, I hail them as among the best evidences of something of
value in the boy; i. e., energy that requires only inteUigent direction.
Now, for successful work among boys in the Sunday school, all of
these peculiarities must be taken into account. This is the reason for
carefully determining the membership of the separate classes, for
federating the classes into a unit at the Sunday school, and subse-
CHURCH WORK FOR BOYS IN LARGE CITIES 447
quently for federating the separate Sunday schools of the entire city
into a larger unit, either in the form of a denominational or an inter-
denominational union.
But it is the work which must be carried on outside of the Sunday
school, during the week-days, that it is most difficult for the Sunday
school to provide, and this especially as regards the necessity for the
boy to safely find a vent for his superfluous energy, ^\^lere the church
has been properly provided with a parish house or other church build-
ing equipped with a gymnasium, etc., the work can, to a certain extent,
be carried on in such places. There are, however, certain serious
objections that have been found to be invariably connected with work
of this character. Some of the most important of these are as follows :
1. The necessity for separate gymnasium buildings for men and
yoimg boys. Whatever advantages may exist from a theoretical stand-
point in having one gymnasium where both adults and young boys
can exercise, the experience of nearly every one, I believe, has shown
that work under these conditions will not be successful. It is possible,
and indeed advisable, to carry on such work for men and the older
boys, say boys over seventeen or eighteen, but for boys between ten
and seventeen, a necessity exists for separate buildings.
2. A lack of the crowd element, or of a sufficient number of play-
fellows. Where a separate gymnasium or recreation house has been
established in any Sunday school, much good work can be done among
its boys. As a rule, however, such work, if limited to the boys immedi-
ately connected with the Sunday School and church, will not be very
successful, nor is the reason difficult to find. The element of the
crowd will generally be lacking. There are very few Sunday schools
that have a sufficient attendance to make such gymnasium attractive.
3. A lack of opportunities for competition. As soon as' a class of
boys makes a certain advance in gymnastic work, a natural desire
exists to compete with other classes of boys. For this purpose some
kind of federation of the Sunday school associations must be made.
4. The lack of an athletic field or grounds where such games as
baseball, football, cricket, etc., can be played. Our large cities are
generally deficient in large playgrounds for the children and athletic
fields for the boys. Even if such a field were provided for individual
churches, the lack of the crowd element which could best be obtamed
by federation would be a serious drawback to the work.
But I would not limit the federation of the church work to the
gymnastic side. There are other divisions of boys' work, such as find
expression in the camping club, the debating club, the camera club,
448 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
the glee club, etc., that equally require federation for their best re-
sults.
Let us inquire what has already been done in the direction of the
federation of church work among the class of boys that attend Sunday
schools. I believe the most important work that has been done in
this direction can be divided into the following classes, — i.e.:
1. Denominational federation, including the Brotherhood of St.
Andrew and the Brotherhood of Andrew and Philip.
2. The various Junior Christian Endeavor Societies of the differ-
ent evangelical churches.
3. The various Junior Ep worth Leagues of the Methodist Epis-
copal and other churches.
4. The Kjiights of St. Arthur of the different evangelical churches.
5. The companies of the Boys' Brigades of the different evangeh-
cal churches.
6. The Total Abstinence Beneficial Associations of the Roman
Catholic churches.
7. The Boys' Department of the Young Men's Christian Associa-
tion. I do not think that any marked federation has been as yet ac-
complished in this work, and I believe that such federation would be a
great improvement.
8. The Boys' Brotherhood of Philadelphia, that is now in opera-
tion in some form or other in different parts of this country.
I believe, however, that the work of all these organizations would
be greatly improved if it were brought into closer contact with the
church, so as to permit, in the carrying on of the work, its direction by
some representative of the different churches represented in the mem-
bership.
THE BROOKLYN CHURCH ATHLETIC LEAGUE
GEORGE J. FISHER, M. D.
PHYSICAL DIRECTOR CENTRAL YOUNG MEn's CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION,
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
The great question iii the Sunday school seems to be, "' How can
we keep these boys interested?" In order to be effective in boys'
work, the Sunday school must reach him during the week. If it can
have something to do with his games, in which he is tremendously
enthusiastic, it will put the church in a right relation with the boy, and
he will become interested in church work.
The Sunday school should not be, as some one has said, " a society
for sitting still," for boys were not made to sit still. They have their
energy to expend, and are bound to use it either for good or evil.
Boys' clubs and societies have been formed by the churches to
guide this energy in the right direction, and while some of these have
been successful, others have fallen short of what they felt they should
have accomphshed. Why? Because the men behind the movement,
as a rule, have not had the experience. It was from no fault of theirs,
for they had not had the opportunity to derive the necessary knowledge.
The churches in Brooklyn that had felt the need of assistance ap-
pealed to the Young Men's Christian Association, from time to time,
to furnish trained men to take charge of gymnastic and calisthenic
classes.
This demand grew so great, that it was thought wise to form an
organization that would bind all of the Sunday schools together for
their mutual benefit. The superintendents were called in conference
to map out a plan whereby their needs could best be met, and the
outcome of this conference was the organization of the Sunday School
Athletic League of Brooklyn.
To quote from the constitution: "The object of the league shall
be: I. To work for the betterment and the enlargement of the Sun-
day schools in Brooklyn, by developing character through athletic
contests, and by making Sunday school attendance a condition of
membership. 2. To maintain a high standard of honesty, courtesy,
and manliness in athletic sports. 3. To establish scientific physical
training in the Sunday schools. 4. To secure and maintain a genuine
amateur basis in Sunday school sport. 5. To institute, regulate, and
govern inter-Sunday school gymnastic and athletic meets.
449
450 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
The league had for its organizer Dr. George J. Fisher, physical
director of the Central Branch of the Young Men's Christian Associa-
tion of Brooklyn, a man peculiarly adapted, through his experience
with boys and gymnasium work, to pilot such an organization. It
has been through his knowledge and untiring work that the organiza-
tion has been brought to the position that it now holds, and all credit
is due to his enthusiasm.
The first step was the formation of various sections, representing
the different phases of athletic sports and superintended by specialists.
For illustration, the league has sections on caUsthenics and gymnas-
tics, bowling, basket-ball, baseball, aquatics, track and field sports.
Each of these is under the charge of a committee composed of men
who are experts on the subject.
The gymnastic committee has formulated a set of cahsthenic and
dumb-bell drill exercises for use of the Sunday schools, so that all will
be working on identical lines. This same committee has provided a
set of standard tests for each group of boys between certain ages, as
follows :
Boys — 12 to 14 years of age
70 yards potato race 25 seconds
Pull-up 6 times
Broad jump 5 feet 6 inches
Juniors — 14 to 16 years
120 yards potato race 40 seconds
Pull-up 8 times
Running high jump 3 feet 10 inches
Intermediate — 16 to 18 years
Quarter-mile patoto race 2 minutes 22 seconds
Pull-up 10 times
Running high jump 4 feet 2 inches
Dip 7 times
Every boy passing these tests, that are made at a stated time, re-
ceives a bronze button with the insignia of the league embossed upon it.
Before being allowed to compete in any meet, the scholar must first
file a statement with the secretary that he is an amateur. His regis-
tration blank must be indorsed by the pastor and superintendent of the
Sunday School affirming regular membership and attendance at school
for four consecutive Sundays before registration is applied for. A
certificate from a physician is also required, stating that the applicant
is physically able to engage in competition. If a scholar desires to
THE BROOKLYN CHURCH ATHLETIC LEAGUE 451
change schools, he cannot represent the school he has last entered,
without first obtaining a written release from his former superintendent.
VVe have supplied officers for the local athletic meets, have organized
basket-ball and bowling tournaments and have furnished twelve men
to various Sunday schools as teachers of gymnastics and managers of
boys' clubs. Some of these are paid, some have no remuneration. It
has been found that a large number who had already drifted from the
Sunday school have now returned to resume their membership, so that
they may be entitled to the privilege of the athletic league. The form
of registration has enabled the league to carry on all the athletic work
on a clean sport basis.
Discussion
MR. E. STAGG WHITIN
SPEYER SCHOOL SETTLEMENT, NEW YORK CITY
Let me outline, in a word, the evolution of the tendency which
has brought about our boy problem. Here in the birth place of free-
dom and the schools, I need not emphasize the early growth of either,
save to note that both went hand in hand until the great industrial
development. By leaps and bounds our nation has strode into the
industrial arena, our education has followed fast, yet not hand in
hand , as it should have done. To-day, educators, as well as social
workers, admit that there is a lack of harmony. In the old Puritan
days, the education, which, in the old country, had been given to but a
few, was given the many, and it served well our democratic purpose.
But under the complex condition of to-day, this type of education,
developed even as much as it has been, has proved inadequate. For
some years now, we have been blind to this truth, and have sought to
correct the evils resulting from this lack of harmony, instead of correct-
ing our education. We have sought to establish, not for the criminal,
but for the normal healthy American boy, corrective organizations to
correct what education should have prevented. By degrees, these
corrective forces — Boys' Clubs, Settlements, Young Men's Christian
Associations, etc., which have sought to supplement the home, the
school, and the church, have gradually been changing, and in all of
them, whatever their policy may be, the final justification of their
existence is that they are educational. Along with this change of our
corrective work to more preventive and educational lines has come
the newer social philosophy into the school itself, and this is gradually,
tending, by slow degrees, to modify the spirit and the work of the school
to meet the needs that we workers with boys are pointing out.
452 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
So it is that what this new education, is bringing about in the schools
is of vital interest to those of us who are engaged in these kindred fields.
The newer aim of education, that of adopting the child to his social
environment, together with that theory of interest which the boy worker
has used, and which the pedagogue now is just working out — these
two principles have tended to make a radical change in education.
The need to-day is the appUcation of these theories to the practice in
our schools. A good many attempts have been made, and the crude
results can be seen. These theories were behind John Dewey in his
work at Chicago, and are the justification for the school extension as
we see it in our great cities to-day. But as yet it is only by the quiet
movement, guided by investigation, which is being carried on by the
universities and normal schools, that the gradual school expansion is
coming about. At Speyer School we are in the throes of it. We are
commencing, with the child as a imit, to study through psychology the
needs of his inner nature, and through sociological methods we are obtain-
ing a correct appreciation of his social environments and needs. This
study tends to point out a need for a more social organization of the
class, limited, maybe, to the definite neighborhood, under a teacher,
who is a neighborhood visitor, and with an atmosphere of freedom and
spontaneity in the method of recitation which develops the power to
reason and to do. An entirely new idea of what study should be is
coming into our school classes. With the emphasis on this social value
of study comes the need of not only many eliminations in the elementary
school curriculum, but also some additions and many changes. The
study of the environment and neighborhood conditions of the respective
schools will lead to more definite functioning of this work. Even the
equipment of the schoolroom is brought into question, and the old
desks which the university, the trade school, and the normal school
have long since discarded are destined to take their leave. Not only
are our schoolrooms warmed by pictures and flower-boxes, but an
air of cheer and brightness is given them by the covering of blackboards
and the use of a few draperies.
Education in its restricted sense has for some time grappled with
the problem of the boy imder fourteen years of age out of school hours.
It naturally will control his work in school, and in the afternoon club
of which he is a member. The thoughtful teacher, in the newer type
of school, can solve the problem of the boy of this age equally well with
ourselves. But in dealing with the boy beyond the fourteenth year,
if we omit the very few and abnormally bright boys who go to high
school, the pedagogue has little experience. What is to be done for
THE BROOKLYN CHURCH ATHLETIC LEAGUE 453
the working boy between fourteen and twenty-one? What can the
elementary school do in preparing him for that time ? What can the
evening club and recreation center do to further develop him so that
he may meet the needs of his social environment? These questions
can only be answered by a clear statement of the principles that under-
lie our work.
TEN YEARS OF WORK WITH BOYS: A RETROSPECT
AND A FORECAST
REV. WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSH, Ph. D.
NEW YORK CITY, FOUNDER OF THE ALLIANCE
It used to be customary to reckon the fundamental agencies of edu-
cation as three; namely, the home, the school, and the church. We
now count four. The fourth is society. Human nature, and especially
child nature, ought to be educated, not only individually, but also
socially, and is to be educated not only by society, but for society.
During the ten years of the Hfe of our Alliance, this conviction has
had its most rapid growth, especially as the conviction applies to boy-
hood; and therefore, instead of relating merely the uneventful annals
of our Alliance, I will devote this brief commemorative paper to an out-
line of ten years' development of social work with boys.
The earHest form of social work with boys in the country, except
in reformatories and orphanages, seems to have been the so-called
" mass clubs " for street-boys. Of these the oldest is the Salem Fra-
ternity, opened in 1869. These clubs rapidly increased for a time
under the leadership of the Alliance of Christian Workers, but when
that went to pieces, they gradually fell away for lack of supervision and
trained workers. During the last ten years their growth has been more
gradual, but more healthy. There are now about 80 of them, enrolling
probably about 25,000 street-boys. They were once little more than
warm meeting-places and game-rooms, presided over by " moral
policemen," but many of them now have classes, gymnasia, and small
group clubs, and resemble the Y. M. C. A. in method, save that they
include no direct rehgious teaching, and they reach a much more needy
class, especially of aliens, Roman Catholics and Jews. Their fatal
defect up to this time has been that, unlike the Y. M. C. A., not having
any provision for young men, they have been obliged to return their
members at the most critical period of life to the streets.
These street-boys' clubs are still sorely in need of fellowship and
supervision. Owning, as yet, little but personal property, they are
easily overthrown when their salaried leader is removed. Three pos-
sibiUties seem open to them. The International Committee of the
Y. M. C. A. might take them on as a special branch of their work,
without obliging them to adopt all the Y. M. C. A. principles. Local
clubs might be conducted under the supervision of the school authori-
454
TEN YEARS OF WORK WITH BOYS 455
ties as an extension of the educational system, or, what seem just now
the more hkely result, a committee analogous to that which directs
the Y. M. C. A. will be formed to direct these clubs.
Next in order of time to the mass clubs were clubs connected with
social settlements, churches, or private philanthropy, which, because
they work with smaller numbers in more intimate relations, are often
called group clubs. Those in settlements are very numerous, and closely
resemble each other. They are drawn entirely from the neighborhood ;
they usually are attempts to reproduce or to organize some sort of a
natural " gang"; their occupations are more educational than those
of the mass clubs ; and they usually connect closely with the settlement
gymnasium, classes, and camp. These clubs do not reach so needy
a class as the mass clubs do, because the street-boy is wary of cultured
people and small parlors, but they do a more thorough work than
is possible in the other sort. These two kinds of clubs used to feel
little sympathy or respect for each other, but recently the mass clubs
are seeking to multiply their groups and the group clubs to secure in
some large room, especially for prospective recruits, something of the
esprit de corps of the larger assemblage.
The churches have recently become very much awake to the pos-
sibilities of group club work. Ten years ago the Christian Endeavor
Society, a magnificient organization, profoundly religious in purpose,
and predominantly feminine in membership, was the only social cen-
ter for youth. But now the Boys' Brigade has had its growth and
partial decline, the Knights of King Arthur is increasing in strength,
and equipments for manual training, gymnastic work, and free play
are multiplied, while from the Christian Endeavor Society and the
Sunday school as direct offshoots little social groups of varying
methods are being organized in great numbers, whose life and soul
is that most precious power, the affection and patient care of some
devoted adult leader. The settlement clubs usually have a local ath-
letic league. The church clubs are beginning to follow their exam-
ple.
The boys' work in the Y. M. C. A. is the most finely organized.
Its growth is entirely recent. Some 300 associations report a work
for boys, and they reach over 100,000 individuals. The Association
has both the mass and the group happily united, a great variety of
methods of approach, usually a good equipment and a trained leader,
contact with boys both indoors and out, winter and summer, and all
united by a holy purpose for character. The Association leaders have
been so prompt to see the dignity and importance of this work that
4S6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
it has already outgrown its immaturities and many of its faults. It
has, as has no other organization, employed the imselfish moral endeav-
ors of boys for each other's good. It has also begun a wise effort to
affiliate with itself organizations outside its own buildings, such as
church clubs, athletic clubs, and even street gangs. This endeavor is
most praiseworthy and hopeful, for economizing instrumentalities and
covering the local field. There is much to be accomplished in this
direction. In small cities I believe the Association is still often the
active rival of the churches, depleting many churches of groups of
boys who could be more thoroughly and intimately governed by pas-
tors or church workers and offering some opportunities, especially re-
ligious, which the churches should be forced to maintain. In such
communities the function of the Association is, I insist,, to supple-
ment the churches, not to displace them, in work with boys. On
the other hand, in the work of formal religious instruction in classes,
by manual and other modem methods, the Association is aheady
setting a stimulating and provocative example in Bible-study for boys
to the church schools.
The two special types of boys which our programme to-day discusses
are touched but not entirely reached by any methods yet described.
The problem of the city boy is yet unsolved. The Y. M. C. A. hardly
touches any class below that of the schoolboy and the working-boy.
There is danger that the mass club is, by its very increasing worth, draw-
ing apart from the street arab and the alien. The municipal boys'
clubs and play centers, connected with our schools in our largest cities,
are the new, most hopeful, and most inclusive agency. The sHght
tendencies which they already show to feel political influence and to
stand for low athletic ideas, we are sanguine to believe, are local and
temporary. Other agencies are also at work. The glorious play-
ground movement, newsboys' leagues, and brass bands, the crusades
against child labor and the tenement, school examination and care of
defectives and degenerates, and the placing-out agencies for sending
boys to the country, are all preventive means of untold value. The
juvenile court and the probation system, the state school and the state
farm in place of the reformatory and jail, these are excellent agencies
for reform after the first downward step has been taken. But so
much remains to be done. Knowledge is coming to us of the actual
conditions of newsboys' lives in our great cities and of a few un-
selfish endeavors that have been made to get down into " the gang "
and win it, not into a settlement or church, whither it would not go,
but by humanizing it and lifting it up even in its own haunts. These
TEN YEARS OF WORK WITH BOYS 457
facts indicate a kind of work demanding sacrificing energy such as
neither settlement nor church can often command.
The problem of the country boy is equally urgent. Unless he is
helped, the springs of the nation's life will be fouled. To summarize
a wise personal letter from Prof. D. C. Wells of Dartmouth, who
has studied and wrought at this problem: there are not enough such
boys together to generate any heat; they are so well known that they
shrink from entering any club that has a recognized moralizing purpose;
they do not care much for skilled craftsmanship, preferring to " chance
it " in life; and the number of institutions that can reach them or of
individuals who want to is small. The school cannot. The church
might, but will it? Some kind of a " village house," with a hearty
social life and a workshop linked to some local industry, seems to be
indicated as a need in every small community in America.
One other class of boys remains to be mentioned, and that one
which is increasing in numbers. I refer to sons of wealthy parents.
I suppose it would be sufl5cient to arouse sympathy in any crusade in
their behalf, and yet no one who has any genuine Americanism can
deny that one is needed. The tendencies of the rich boy's life are all
towards isolation, contempt for poverty and toil, and a conception of
himself as the depositary of a fortune and of an unhampered chance
to know the. world, the flesh, and the devil. The only cure for this,
as for every sort of boy, is to catch him young. Some of this class
are in Sunday schools and can be brought to know other classes of
boys before they get to be snobs. Some of them are getting a pretty
good idea of fellowship in schools like Groton and St. Mark's, and at
the school camps in New Hampshire. A few of them succeed in learn-
ing the joy of helping the other fellow when they get to manhood.
THE THIRD CONVENTION
PROCEEDINGS
THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION
Boston, Massachusetts, February 12-16, 1905
opening service
Sunday, February 12th, at 7:30 p. m., " A Meeting of Devotion,
Spiritual Fellowship, and Inspiration, " preparatory to the work of the
Convention, was held in the Old South Church, Copley Square. Pro-
fessor Francis G. Peabody, D. D., of Harvard University, First Vice-
President of the Association, presided. Addresses were made by Mr.
L. Wilbur Messer, General Secretary of the Young Men's Christian
Association, Chicago, 111.; Rt. Rev. William Lawrence, D. D., S. T. D.,
Bishop of the Protestant Espiscopal diocese of Massachusetts;
Professor George A. Coe, Ph. D., Northwestern University, Chicago,
Illinois; and Professor Edward C. Moore, D. D., Harvard University.
RECEPTIONS
On the morning of February 13th, a reception was given at Welles-
ley College to the association. After a gracious welcome by President
Caroline Hazard, Litt. D., a devotional service was held in the college
chapel, conducted by President Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D.. followed
by visits to buildings and a luncheon.
In the afternoon at three o'clock, the Association was welcomed by
Harvard University, in Sanders Theatre, with greetings by the acting
president of the University, in the absence of President Eliot, and by
Professor Francis G. Peabody, D. D., to which fitting response was
made by President Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D. After stereopticon
views illustrating the development of the University buildings had been
described by Professor Peabody, the guests, under the escort of stu-
dents of the University, visited as many of the buildings as possible.
A reception was given by the ladies of the University Faculty at the
Phillips Brooks House.
In the evening at 8 o'clock, an official reception was given to the
Association in the historic Faneuil Hall, under the auspices of the
entertainment committee of the Boston Committee of Arrangements.
Hon. E. H. Haskell, chairman of the sub-committee, introduced Hon.
John D. Long, Ex-Governor of Massachusetts, as the presiding officer
of the evening. After felicitous greetings, he introduced Lieutenant-
Governor Curtis Guild, of Massachusetts; William E. Huntingdon,
461
462 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
D. D., President of Boston University; Rt. Rev. William Lawrence,
D. D., S. T. D., Bishop of the Protestant Espiscopal diocese of Mas-
sachusetts; and Rev. P. S. Henson, D. D., pastor of the Tremont
Temple Baptist Church, who made addresses of hearty welcome.
Appropiate response was made for the Association by President Charles
Cuthbert Hall, D. D. These exercises were followed by an informal
reception, during which the members of the Association had the privi-
lege of meeting personally the honored guests of the occasion, who,
in addition to those named above, were Rabbi Charles Fleischer, Mrs.
Mary A. Livermore, President Henry S. Pritchett, Ph. D., of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology; President Caroline Hazard,
Lit. D., of Wellesley College; Miss Sarah L. Arnold, Dean of Sim-
mons College; Hon. Samuel B. Capen, Hon. Robert Treat Paine,
and Rev. Francis E. Clark, D. D., President of the United Societies
of Christian Endeavor.
CONSECRATION SERVICE
Tuesday, at 4 p. m., in the Park Street Church, the Association as-
sembled for a Meeting of Spiritual Worship and Consecration, prepara-
tory to the General Sessions of the Convention. Professor Edward
C. Moore, D. D., of Harvard University, presided. Prayers for di-
vine blessing upon the Convention were led by Bishop William Eraser
McDowell, President Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D., Rev. J. T.
Beckley, D. D., President W. H. P. Faimce, and Professor Francis G.
Peabody, D. D. The choir of Wellesley College assisted in the services.
THE THEME OF THE CONVENTION
The programme of the Convention was carefully constructed upon
the general theme, " The Aims of Religious Education." The general
sessions were five in number, including a joint session of Departments,
on Wednesday morning, and the business session on Thursday
morning.
THE FIRST GENERAL SESSION OF THE CONVENTION
Was held in Converse Hall, Tremont Temple, Tuesday, at 7:30 p. m.
After devotional services conducted by Rev. Rockwell Harmon Potter,
pastor First Church of Christ, Hartford, Connecticut, an address of
welcome was made by Mr. Albert E. Winship, Litt. D., editor the
Journal 0/ Education, chairman of the Boston Committee of Arrange-
ments.
THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 463
ADDRESS OF WELCOME
ALBERT E. WINSHIP, Lit. D.
EDITOR THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATION; CHAIRMAN OF THE BOSTON COMMITTEE
OF ARRANGEMENTS
Mr. President and other Guests, — It is impossible to speak our ap-
preciation of our guests or our pleasure as host in six minutes, nor could
any one, least of all the chairman of a committee of seventy do the
the occasion justice in limitless time. In order to escape such respon-
sibility, I had Sunday evening and the whole of Monday set apart
for a series of suggestions of our welcome. Our largest and most
historic church — the Old South — furnished appropriate introduc-
tion ; at Wellesley College, modern Christian scholasticism found ex-
pression; at Harvard, the oldest educational institution, the highest
scholarship of the day acknowledged the honor of your presence; and
in the evening, at Faneuil Hall — Liberty's shrine — we turned loose
an array of dignitaries who could not be trusted with a six-minute
limitation. It is left for the chairman merely to express an official
welcome.
It is unfortunate for us that you were born in February. We really
do not keep open house in this month. Ordinarily, we are " not at
home." Our weather is not on exhibition, our seaside resorts and
mountain houses are closed, you have done your Christmas shopping,
and even our bargain-counters have been closed. We recognize, how-
ever, the appropriateness of your birthday season, as February's one
distinction is her glorious galaxy of birthdays, with such names as
Washington and Lincoln, Longfellow and Lowell, St. Valentine and
Votaw.
I fully appreciate that it is ours to act, yours to speak; ours to serve,
yours to command. We shall be busy doing, that you may have free-
dom in talking. Our only ambition is to honor the traditions of our
fathers as host.
For two centuries, threescore and ten years. Religion and Education
have walked hand in hand in Boston. In this we have pride, as being the
Jerusalem of the New World ; and with no little chagrin did we see this
child of the new century born in the cattle mart of the West; but wise
men went from the East with their ofifering of faith, hope, and charity, —
and the greatest of these was charity. W^ith unfeigned pride we now
see this child placed in the cradle of liberty.
We cannot welcome you, your religion, or your education, you have
a more noble welcome from worthier lives ; for this is not the city of these
464 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
men and women who serve tables, but it is the city of Cotton Mather
and PhilHps Brooks, of Sam Adams and Charles Sumner, of Horace
Mann and Julia Ward Howe. Theirs is the welcome.
It may not be out of place to suggest that we will welcome all the
religion that you think Chicago and New York can spare, and that you
are welcome to all the education you can extract from our traditions.
We know that we are enriched by your coming and will be saddened by
your going. We hope you will be comfortable while you stay and that
your memories of Boston will be pleasant.
We 've no "Welcome" when you come,
We've no " Farewell" when you go;
For you came not when you came,
And you go not when you go.
A Welcome ne'er we '11 give you,
And Farewell we '11 never say;
In our hearts you 're always with us,
Always will be, every day.
Response on behalf of the Association was made by Clifford W.
Barnes, M. A., General Secretary. The President's Annual Address
was delivered by President Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D.
The subject for the first general session, " How can We Bring the
Individual into Conscious Relation with God ?" was discussed in three
addresses, — on " The Direct Influence of God upon One's Life," by
Rev. William F. McDowell, D. D., LL. D., Bishop of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, Chicago, Illinois; on " The Bible as an Aid to
Self-discovery," by President Henry Churchill King, D. D., Oberlin
College, Oberlin, Ohio; and on " The Church as a Factor in Per-
sonal Religious Development," by Rt. Rev. William Lawrence, D. D.,
S. T. D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal diocese of Massachu-
setts. The session was closed with prayer by Rev. John Coleman Adams,
D. D., pastor Universalist Church, Hartford, Connecticut.
THE JOINT SESSION OF DEPARTMENTS
Wednesday, 10 a. m. The Convention met in the Park Street
Church. Devotional services were conducted by Rev. Samuel A. Eliot,
D.D., president American Unitarian Association, Boston, Massachusetts.
Rev. William C. Bitting, D. D., pastor Mount Morris Baptist Church,
New York City, and William J. Parker, assistant general secretary
of the Young Men's Christian Association, Chicago, Illinois, were
elected secretaries of the Convention.
THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 465
President Charles Cuthert Hall, D. D., appointed, with the con-
firmation of the Convention, the committees:
On Enrollment: Chairman, Mr. Appleton P. Williams.
On Nominations: Chairman, Mr. Loring W. Messer.
On Resolutions: Chairman, President Henry Churchill King.
Rules for the Convention were adopted as follows:
" The principal addresses at the evening sessions shall be limited
to twenty minutes each. Speeches in the formal discussion shall be
limited to eight minutes each. Addresses in the Joint Session of Depart-
ments shall be limited to twelve minutes each. The speaker in each
case shall be notified by a stroke of the bell when he enters upon the last
minute of his time; and by a double stroke of the bell when the last
minute is completed. The time of any speaker shall not be extended.
"Addresses by members from the floor, in the Joint Session of
Departments, shall be limited to three minutes each. Members desiring
to participate in the discussion shall send their cards by the ushers to the
presiding officer, who will call on as many as the time of the session
permits."
The President announced the serious illness of President William R.
Harper, LL. D., of the University of Chicago, Illinois; Professor George
W. Pease, Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy, Hartford, Con-
necticut; and Rt. Rev. John L. Spalding, Bishop of the Roman
Catholic diocese of Peoria, who had been expected to participate in the
Convention. After united prayer in their behalf, led by Professor
George A. Coe, Ph. D., Northwestern University, Chicago, lUinois,
it was voted that, with President Hall, Rev. Endicott Peabody, D. D.,
head master Groton School, Groton, Massachusetts; Chancellor
James H. Kirkland, Ph. D., LL. D., Vanderbilt University, Nashville,
Tennessee; and President William De Wilt Hyde, D. D., LL. D.,
Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, be appointed a committee to ex-
press to these sufferers the sympathies of the Convention."
The topic for the Joint Session of the Departments, " The Place of
Formal Instruction in Religious and Moral Instruction," was discussed
in addresses on " The Home," by President G. Stanley Hall, Ph. D.,
LL.D., Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts; " The Sunday
School," by Rev. Everett D. Burr, D. D., pastor First Baptist Church,
Newton Center, Massachusetts; "The Young Men's Christian Associa-
tion," by Professor George Albert Coe, Ph. D., Northwestern Unversity,
Chicago, Illinois; " The Pubhc School," by Mr. George H. Martin,
secretary of the Board of Education, Boston, Massachusetts; " The
Preparatory School," by Rev. Endicott Peabody, D. D., head master
Groton School, Groton, Massachusetts; and " The College," by Presi-
466 ■ THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
dent George Harris, D. D., LL. D., Amherst College, Amherst,
Massachusetts. The joint session then gave place to a special session
of the Department of Correspondence Instruction, at which an address
was made by President Frank W. Gunsaulus, D. D., Armour Institute
of Technology, Chicago, IlUnois, on " The Place and Possibilities of
Correspondence Instruction in Religious Education." The session was
closed with prayer by Rev. E. F. Merriam, D. D., editor The
Watchman, Boston, Massachusetts.
THE SECOND GENERAL SESSION OF THE CONVENTION
Wednesday evening, 7 :3o o'clock, the Convention assembled in Con-
verse Hall, Tremont Temple. Devotional services were conducted by
Professor Herbert L. Willett, Ph. D., the University of Chicago, Illinois.
The subject for the evening, "How can We Develop in the Individual
a Social Conscience ?" was discussed in three addresses, — on " Literature
as an Expression of Social Ideals," by Professor Arthur S. Hoyt, D. D.,
Auburn Theological Seminary, Auburn, New York; on "Science as a
Teacher of Morality," by Professor John M. Coulter, Ph. D., the
University of Chicago, Illinois ; and on " The Ethical Education of Public
Opinion, " by President Henry S. Pritchett, Ph. D., Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Boston, Massachusetts. The general subject
was further discussed by Professor Henry S. Nash, D. D., Episcopal
Theological School, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Professor William E. B.
Du Bois, Ph. D., Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia; and Rev. Samuel
M. Crothers, D. D., minister of the First Parish, Cambridge, Massa-
chusetts.
A pleasant experience was the presence on the platform of Mrs.
Julia Ward Howe, who was introduced to the audience by President
Hall. The entire audience rose to greet the distinquished guest. After
a few words of encouragement to the Association, Mrs. Howe, by
request, repeated her "Battle Hymn of the Republic."
The session closed with prayer by Rev. Charles F. Rice, D. D., pastor
Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church, Springfield, Massachusetts.
ANNUAL BUSINESS MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION
The Association met for its annual business session in the Park
Street Church, Thursday morning, 10 o'clock, with President Charles
Cuthbert Hall, D. D., in the chair. Devotional services were conducted
by Rev. Albert E. Dunning, D. D., editor The Congregationalist,
Boston, Massachusetts.
The Directors having recommended certain amendments to the
THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 467
Constitution, the Chair appointed as a committee to formulate such
amendments, Messrs. Sanders, Coe, and Bitting.
The minutes of the Second Convention of the Association, Philadel-
phia, March 2-4, 1904, were presented by the Recording Secretary of
the Association, Professor George A. Coe, Ph. D., and approved as
printed in the Proceedings of that Convention.
Clifford W. Barnes, Ph. D., General Secretary, presented the follow-
ing Annual Report, which was accepted and ordered placed on file:
THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE GENERAL SECRETARY
In giving the report of the General Secretary for the year which has
just come to a close, I must beg your indulgence if more is said concern-
ing the work which is planned than of that which has been accomplished.
To summarize briefly, the Association may be said during the past
twelve months, to have:
First. Completed its organization. A movement so wide in its
scope and so varied in its activities could not be properly officered, much
less gain momentum, short of the two years which have marked the life
of this Association. And when one carefully scans the 250 names
which make up its official list, and realizes the particular fitness of each
man for his special task, he can but feel that this in itself is a remarkable
achievement.
Second. Developed some of its departments. We would mention
especially those of the Home, Religious Art, and Music, Young Men's
Christian Association and Libraries. These departments have kept in
touch with the Association headquarters, their ofiicers have met in
consultation, they have made investigations along their respective
lines, and expect to publish very soon some valuable monographs.
Third. Established guilds. These local organizations of the
Religious Education Association have now been formed in six places,
and include a total membership of over four hundred and sixty. Active
members of a guild are members in full standing of the Religious Edu-
cation Association, joining in the regular manner, but paying their
enrollment fee of one dollar directly to the guild. Nothing in the past
year's experience has been more encouraging than the zeal with which
Christian workers of all denominations have united in these local-
organizations, undertaking serious study in Old and New Testament
Literature, in Teacher-training, in Religious Art and Music, in the
betterment of home instruction, in establishing traveling libraries,
and in a general agitation for better and more pervasive religious
and moral education.
Turning now to the future, I take pleasure in presenting for your
approval the following policy, which has just been adopted by the
Board of Directors for the coming year.
I . Leasing new and enlarged quarters for the Executive Office. With
the growth in Association membership, and the consequent increase
in detail work, the space occupied at 153 La Salle Street is proving too
468 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
small, and larger and better rooms are needed. The Executive OflSice
is therefore to be moved on the ist of May to the new First National
Bank Building, perhaps the handsomest structure of its kind in the
world, and certainly for our work the best located in Chicago.
2. Installing a complete and permanent exhibit, in connection
with the Executive OflSce, of all literature, charts, Sunday school lesson
helps, and other material which bear directly upon moral and religious
education. It is planned to have this matter so skillfully arranged and
so well selected that the oflScer in charge shall be able to answer any query
concerning the best thing produced (or the finest work done) in any of
the various lines in which the Association is interested. As rapidly as
new material comes to hand, the purpose is to bring it to the attention of
the respective departments to which it properly belongs, and obtain the
judgment of the department as to its merit.
3. Carry on the editorial work of the Association at the Executive
Office, and make the Official Bulletin the voice of the Association and
of its various departments in commending whatever movement, method,
or teaching seems worthy of publicity and support. The tools will be
at hand in the material constantly received, in the wise and careful
judgments rendered by the departments, and possibly in an editorial
staff of able critics representing several denominations and recognized
for their standing and fairness. It is planned to issue at least six num-
bers of the Bulletin each year, to have original productions from some
of the departments in each number, and, with the critical reviews pre-
sented, to thus furnish our members with a magazine of unique character
and great value.
4. Choose from among the departments two or three whose work
is of most immediate importance, assist them in preparing a practical
scheme of operation, and then, standing behind with the full strength
of the Association, endeavor to achieve some definite results.
5. Hold twenty conferences under the auspices of the Religious
Education Association in as many large centers, covering the middle
section of our country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. These con-
ferences need not occupy more than an afternoon and evening, but in
that time two great interdenominational meetings can be held, five or
six strong addresses can be given, and a community sentiment in favor
of moral and religious education can be thoroughly aroused. It is
planned to conclude these conferences with the organization of a guild,
which shall be the local representative of the Religious Education
Association, and, in addition to its other work, shall arrange each year
for a general gathering of the kind described.
6. Prosecute a vigorous canvass for new members. Through these
conferences and the interest which they are expected to kindle, through
the Ofi&cial Bulletin and the influence which it ought to exert through
the quickened activity of every department, and last, but not least,
through the actual accomplishment of some work that will strongly
appeal to the people, through all these agencies and through the loyal
endeavor of each of you, we hope to speedily raise the membership of
this Association from two thousand to five thousand. And this increase
THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 469
in members is most desirable, not merely nor chiefly because it will
help the Association financially, but because it will magnify, by each
new member, the Association's opportunity for good, and will vastly
strengthen its authority when it speaks for reform.
7. And finally, obtain subscriptions to the amount of $20,000,
with which to carry on this aggressive campaign. The membership
dues are so small, and the cost of our literature alone is so great, that
it is impossible to make this work pay for itself. We are well aware of
the fact that colleges and universities, unless supported by the state,
require for their maintenance large endowments and generous sub-
scriptions.
In a sense, this Association is an educational institution, drawing its
students from forty-eight states and territories, six British provinces,
and nine foreign countries, numbering in its faculty two hundred and fifty
of the leading educators of America, claiming alliance with thirty-nine of
the leading churches and denominations of the world, and exerting an
influence for the moral and religious betterment of humanity which only
God in his wisdom can measure. Never did greatness of opportunity
and largeness of public service make a stronger demand for generous
support, and we hope the day is not far distant when some wise and
liberal citizen shall place this great movement on the firm foundation
which a strong endowment provides.
Professor C. W. Votaw, Ph. D., Editorial Secretary, presented the
following Annual Report, which was accepted and ordered placed on
file:
THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE EDITORIAL SECRETARY
The work of the Editorial Secretary during the past year, the second
year in the history of the Association, has nearly doubled in comparison
with that of the first year. During the first year 560 pages of material
were edited and published by the Editorial Secretary. During this
second year, which has just closed, the amount was 1,010 pages of litera-
ture. It was to be expected that such an increase of the publication
work of the Association should take place, and the amount would have
been trebled rather than doubled had the resources of the Association
been as large as we could have wished, and had we not had to undergo
a change of General Secretaries. The specific publications of the
Association may be enumerated.
1. The first publication of the fiscal year was the Ofiicial Bulletin
No. 3, a forty-eight-page pamphlet, issued May i, 1904. Twenty
thousand copies of this Bulletin were printed, sent to members, and
otherwise carefully distributed during the year.
2. The second publication was the volume of Proceedings of the
Philadelphia Convention, issued September 10, 1904. The edition
of the Proceedings this year was 3,000 copies, and the pages were pre-
served in electrotype for use in a second edition when it is called for.
The cost of printing the volume was $2,423.13.
470 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
3. The policy outlined in the report of the Editorial Secretary a
year ago to issue in separate pamphlet form the addresses given in
a particular department, was followed this year in the department of
Religious Art and Music, and of Christian Associations. Five hun-
dred copies of each set of papers were provided for the special use of
the department, and at the expense of the executive committees of
these departments. The papers of other departments would have
been similarly issued in separate form had it been possible to arrange
for the necessary expense.
4. Official Bulletin No. 4, a pamphlet of twenty pages, was
issued September i, 1904, 2,500 copies being printed.
5. A four-page circular, descriptive of the contents of the first and
second annual volumes of Proceedings.
6. A general circular, of eight pages containing the simplest facts
■concerning the Association, for wide use in making known the history
and ideas of our movement. Twenty thousand copies of this eight-page
circular have been printed.
7. The list of officers and members contained in the closing ninety
pages of the volume of Proceedings was separately printed in pamphlet
form for the general use of the Executive Office. One thousand copies
of this reprint have been used.
8. Official Bulletin No. 5, a pamphlet of 40 pages, was issued Jan-
uary 15, 1905.
9. The preliminary programme of the Boston Convention, a
thirty-two-page pamphlet.
10. A circular of twelve pages has just been prepared for use at
this Convention, and, subsequently, with reference to the Local Guilds.
11. The final programme for this Convention, a pamphlet of
thirty-two pages, with cover. An edition of ten thousand copies was
prepared.
This brief statement of the publications of the Association during
the past year will give some indication as to the editorial work that has
actually been done at headquarters. Summing it all up, 89,000 pieces
of printed matter have been used in the work of the Association during
the year. And the actual number of pages of this printed material
for the year is 3,264,000, every page of which has been put judiciously
into circulation where its influence has certainly been felt.
FINANCIAL REPORT
For the Eleven Months, March i, 1904, to January 31, 1905
(The previous fiscal year of the Association ended February 29, 1904.)
Receipts
Balance in bank, March i, 1904 $154.64
Receipts from memberships 3>53S-7^
Sale of Proceedings 362.05
Contributions 4,070.16
Miscellaneous receipts 1 7-84
Loan from Commercial Bank 3,000.00
$11,140.40
THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 471
Expenditures
Pay-roll $5,345.04
Traveling and Philadelphia Convention ex-
penses 830.3s
Rent 453-75
Postage and express 1,119.22
Printing, 1903 account $1,922.27
Printing, 1904 account 1,091.63
3,013.90
Office expenses, stationery, telephone, etc .. . 278.25
Assets
Class A
Balance in bank, January. 31, 1905 $ 81.79
Cash on hand 18.10
Special pledges, payable July ist 6,000.00
MEMBERSHIP REPORT
)1 1,040.51
Balance $99.89
Liabilities
Commercial National Bank, Chicago $3,000.00
University of Chicago Press 5,474.61
Bills payable 747-34
$9,221.95
$6,099.89 $6,099.89
Class B
Sustaining pledges outstanding $1,165.00
Philadelphia conditional pledges 2,185.00
1903 and 1904 membership dues 225.00
/903 Proceedings (1,499 volumes) 1,199.20
1904 Proceedings (911 volumes) 728.80
Miscellaneous bills receivable 90.00
$5>593-oo
Estimated value 3,122.06 $3,122.06
$9,221.95
The membership of the Association, as reported last year, was 1,647,
including ^^ institutional; the membership is now 1,980, including
84 institutional memberships, showing an increase during the year of
333-
The Committee on Enrollment presented the following report,
which was accepted and ordered placed on file.
472 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON ENROLLMENT
Maine, 20; New Hampshire, 22; Vermont, 7; Massachusetts, 444;
Rhode Island, 9; Connecticut, 52; New York state, 49; Pennsylvania,
13; New Jersey, 6; Illinois, 14; Ohio, 10; Iowa, 8; Virginia, 2;
Kentucky, i; Tennessee, 5; Alabama, i; District of Columbia, 2;
Minnesota, 2; North Dakota, i; South Dakota, i; Washington, i;
Mississippi, i; California, 2; Wisconsin, i; Michigan, 6; Northwest
Territory, i; Montreal, i; New Brunswick, 3; Nova Scotia, 1;
Prince Edward Island, i; Ontario, 3; England, i; Finland, i;
Bulgaria, i ; Japan, i ; India, i 695
The Committee on Nominations presented a report nominating
ofhcers and directors as follows. (See the List of Officers, pp. 000-
000.)
The Secretary of the Convention was instructed to cast the ballot
of the members of the Association for the President and Vice-Presi-
dents nominated in the report, and they were declared unanimously
elected.
The Secretary of the Convention was instructed to cast the ballot
of the members of the Association for the Directors nominated in the
report, and they were declared unanimously elected.
REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION
The Committee on Amendments to the Constitution presented its
report. The amendments proposed were unanimously adopted, as
follows :
Amend Article III, section 3, by substituting for the present section
the following:
"Sec. 3. In each department except the Council of Religious
Education the voting membership shall consist of such members of the
Association as express in writing their desire to be affiliated with the
department and are accepted by the Executive Committee thereof."
Amend Article III, section 4, paragraph 2, second sentence, by sub-
stituting for said sentence the following:
"The absence of a member from two consecutive annual meetings
of the Council may be regarded as equivalent to resignation of mem-
bership, and a new member may be elected for the unexpired term."
Substitute for Article IV the following:
" ARTICLE IV — MEMBERSHIP
" Section i. There shall be three classes of members: Active
(individual and institutional). Sustaining, and Corresponding.
" Sec. 2. Active members shall be (i) teachers, pastors, and any
persons otherwise engaged or interested in the work of religious or
moral education as represented by the seventeen departments named
in Art. Ill; (2) institutions and organizations thus engaged.
" Sec. 3. The Corresponding Members shall be persons not
THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 473
resident in America who may be elected to such membership by the
Board of Directors. The number of Corresponding Members shall
at no time exceed fifty.
" Sec. 4. The fees of membership shall be as follows: Active
Members shall pay an annual fee of Three Dollars; Sustaining Mem-
bers, an annual fee of Ten Dollars; Corresponding Members shall
pay no fees. All fees shall be payable on or before the holding of the
Annual Convention. Members who have paid into the Association the
amount of One Hundred Dollars at one time shall be designated Life
Members.
" Sec. 5. Members may withdraw from membership by giving
written notice to the Secretary before January i. Resumption of
membership will be possible on payment of the annual fee for the cur-
rent year.
" Sec. 6. All members of the Association whose fees are paid
shall receive the volume of " Proceedings " of the Annual Convention.
" Sec. 7. All members of the Association shall be elected by the
Board of Directors.
" Sec. 8. Only those members whose fees are paid shall have the
right to vote and to hold office in the Association and its departments."
Amend Article V, section i, by striking out the words, " Financial
Secretary."
RESOLUTIONS OF THE CONVENTION
The Committee on resolutions presented its report, which was
adopted.
The Religious Education Association, deeply appreciating the
coirdial welcome it has received in the city of Boston, and the thorough
and generous provision that has been made for the conduct of its busi-
ness and the comfort of its members, desires to express its hearty thanks
to all who have contributed to this cause.
1. To the Committee of Arrangements, especially to its chairman,
Dr. Albert E. Winship, and its secretary. Rev. Frederick H. Means,
for the careful planning and thorough work which has been so largely
responsible for the success of the Convention.
2. To all those generous donors who have contribnted to the ex-
penses of the Convention.
3. To the prominent citizens who tendered to the Association the
delightful reception at Faneuil Hall, and to the special Entertainment
Committee, through whom the reception was arranged.
4. To the Officers of the Old South Church for the use of their
building for the service of Sunday evening, February 12th; to the
choir of that church for their inspiring part in the worship; and to the
First Baptist Church and its pastor for their co-operation m the service.
5. To Wellesley College and Harvard University for their gracious
and beautiful hospitality.
6. To the Ancient and' Hotior able Artillery Company for the courte-
ous invitation to visit their armory.
474 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
7. To those who have put at our disposal the halls in which the busi-
ness of the Convention has been so conveniently transacted, especially
to the Twentieth Century Club, Boston University, the American
Unitarian Association, the Young Men's Christian Association, and
the Boston Public Library, the use of whose rooms was freely given.
8. To the Press for full and accurate reports of the proceedings of
the Convention, made possible by the hearty co-operation of all the
speakers, together with the effective work of the Press Agent.
9. To the Committee in charge of the Sunday School Exhibit, for
placing before us, at the cost of much labor and expense on their part,
a collection so unique and helpful.
10. To the Officers of the English High School Cadet Corps for their
assistance as ushers at our general sessions, a service freely rendered and
admirably performed.
11. We thank all the men and women who have helped in any
way to make this Convention a success, and have thereby declared
their faith in the ideals and purpose of this Association.
The Aims of the Association
12. Impressed with a deep conviction of the need of a general
revival of religious and moral education, and guided by the
experience of the last three years, the Religious Education Associa-
tion offers the following statement of its purpose:
The threefold purpose of the Religious Education Association is:
To inspire the educational forces of our country with the religious
ideal;
To inspire the religious forces of our country with the educational
ideal; and
To keep before the public mind the ideal of Religious Education,
and the sense of its need and value.
In detail, its purpose is:
1. To bring together in one comprehensive organization the
leaders and workers of all ecclesiastical, evangelical, educational,
cultural, and social organizations who wish for fellowship, for mutual
interchange of thought, information and experience, and for co-opera-
tion in achieving the highest ideal of personality and citizenship.
2. By means of this organization of leaders, to promote the inter-
relation of all existing agencies of religious and moral education, for
mutual knowledge and sympathy, for economy of effort, for friendly
co-operation, and for united strength.
3. To survey the whole field of religious and moral education,
promoting a study of conditions, reporting the organized and individ-
ual forces at work within it, fostering thought, discussion, and experi-
ment, determining the principles .and the methods of progress.
4. To reach and to disseminate correct thinking on the relation
of religion and morality to education.
5. To make religion a pervasive power for personal and social
goodness.
THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 475
6. To maintain the high ideal of education, in which character
and service are the goal.
7. To show that religious education, taken comprehensively, in-
cludes evangelism as a vital factor.
8. To apply to religious and moral education the best educational
principles and modes of practice derived from modern psychology and
pedagogy, and thereby to put the religious forces of the country in
sympathetic touch with the matured results of scholarly research in all
lines.
9. To promote the study and interpretation of the Bible, and to
encourage all methods by which its truth may be learned and made ef-
fective for the development of religious and ethical life.
10. To promote worship and social service as essential to the
highest culture, and to this end to emphasize the educational function
of the church.
11. To discover the means by which the Sunday school may be
made more efficient in the religious culture of the young.
12. To assist those who are in the process of education to co-
ordinate their intellectual development with the maintenance and
deepening of a religious experience, and to enlist the interest and support
of the intellectual leaders of the nation on the side of the moral and re-
ligious life.
13. To accomplish this work through —
(i) The Annual Convention, for the specific discussion of the
problems of religious and moral education and for conference by
workers as to methods.
(2) The annual volume of Proceedings, putting into permanent
form the addresses of the Convention and containing general informa-
tion about the Association.
(3) The Council, for the purpose of reaching and disseminating
correct thinking on all general subjects relating to religious and moral
education.
(4) The Departments, whose executive committees and co-operat-
ing members shall carry forward the ideas and the plans of the Asso-
ciation in their several fields.
(5) The Executive Office, to serve as a clearing-house of informa-
tion, connecting with officers and members, and advancing the work
through the various channels provided.
(6) Conferences on Religious and Moral Education, to be held in
states, districts, and cities, for discussion, stimulus, and spread of ideas
and methods.
(7) Guilds organized in communities, to unite ministers, Sunday
school workers, public school teachers, Endeavorers, Y. M. C. A.
workers, and all persons interested in religion and morality, for mu-
tual fellowship, study, and co-operation in educational progress.
(8) Literature of the Association, to be occasionally published in
the form of official bulletins, proceedings of district or departmental
conferences reports of investigations, monographs on special sub-
jects, departmental handbooks, etc.
476 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Mr. L. Wilbur Messer made a statement on behalf of the Execu-
tive Committee concerning the finances of the Association, in which
he announced that the debt accumulated during the two years of exist-
ence, amounting to $6,000, had been provided for by guaranteed sub-
scriptions, and that the sum of $20,000, apart from membership fees,
was needed for the enlarged work of the Association.
THE ANNUAL SURVEY OF PROGRESS
Following the business session of the Association, " The Annual Sur-
vey of Progress in Religious and Moral Education " was presented
by President W. H. P. Faunce, D.D., LL.D., President Brown Uni-
versity, Providence, Rhode Island, the newly elected First Vice-
President of the Association.
The session of the Association was closed with prayer by Rev.
Rivington D. Lord, D. D., President General Conference Free Bap-
tists, Brooklyn, New York.
THIRD GENERAL SESSION OF THE CONVENTION
The third general session of t he Convention was held in Converse
Hall, Tremont Temple Thursday evening, 7.30 o'clock. The First
Vice-President of the Association, Professor Francis G. Peabody, D. D.,
Harvard University, presided. Devotional services were conducted by
Rev. William P. Merrill, D. D., pastor Sixth Presbyterian Church,
Chicago, Illinois.
The resolutions of the Convention concerning the " Aims of the
Religious Education Association " were read by Rev. Frank K. San-
ders, Ph.D., D.D., Ex-President of the Association.
On behalf of the Council of the Association, Ex-President Sanders
made a statement of the plans of the Council for the current year.
DIGEST OF MINUTES OF THE COUNCIL OF RELIGIOUS
EDUCATION
February 14-16, 1905
Voted, That the Chairman of the Council appoint a committee to
select a commission to prepare a book of religious selections for use
in public and private schools; that the Chairman of the Council be a
member of this committee; and that the commission report in writing
to the members of the Council before the next meeting. This com-
mittee, as chosen by the Chairman, consisted of Dean Sanders, Dr.
Coe, Dr. Votaw, President Swain, President C. C. Hall, and Professor
Pace.
THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 477
Voted, That the Recording Secretary be requested to communi-
cate to the Executive Board of the Association the judgment of the
Council that a manual briefly setting forth the field of religious educa-
tion, the agencies at work, their co-ordination, and what it is desirable
to achieve, should be prepared.
Voted, That the committee to choose the commission to prepare the
book of religious selections be asked to select an editorial board to
prepare a selected bibliography of religious education.
Voted, That the same committee select a commission to study the
elements of an adequate religious education.
Voted, That the same committee select a commission to study re-
ligious statistics.
Voted, That the Executive Committee of the Council be empowered
to call special meetings of the Council.
Voted, That the report of the Nominating Committee be adopted,
and that the Recording Secretary be authorized to cast lots for the
expiration of the terms of all unassigned members.
This report was as follows:
For Chairman, Dean Frank K. Sanders, Ph. D., D. D.
For Recording Secretary, Rev. Wilham Byron Forbush, Ph. D.
For additional members of the Executive Committee (the Chair-
man, Recording Secretary, and Executive Secretary, Dr. Coe, being
exofficio members), Walter L. Hervey, Ph. D. ; President L. L. Dog-
gett. Ph. D.; President H. C. King, D. D.
For members of the Council:
Re-elected: Patterson Du Bois; Principal Samuel T. Dutton; J. D.
Hammond, D. D.; Professor Charles R. Henderson, D. D.; Pro-
fessor George W. Pease; Professor E. D. Starbuck, Ph.D.; Professor
Frederick Tracy, Ph. D.
New Members: Rev. James Atkins, D. D.; Professor Borden P.
Bowne, LL. D.; President Samuel Eliot, D. D.; Professor H. H.
Home, Ph. D.; Very Rev. Thomas J. Shahan, D. D.; Professor C. W.
Votaw, Ph. D.
The lot resulted as follows:
Expiration in 1906; Bowne, Brumbaugh, Butler, Coe, Dawson,
Hervey, St. John, Tillett, Wells.
1907: Baldwin, Doggett, Gulick, Home, Mathews, McDowell,
Miller, Pace, Peloubet.
1908: Blakeslee, E. E. Brown, M. C. Brown, Haley, C. C. Hall,
G. S. Hall, Mead, See, Shahan.
478 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
1909: Atkins, Burton, Fauhce, Forbush, Harrower, Pratt, Stewart,
Swain, Thwing.
1910: Dewey, Harper, Harris, King, McMurry, Sanders, Sheldon,
Spalding, Taylor, Tyler.
191 1 : Du Bois, Button, Eliot, Hammond, Henderson, Pease, Star-
buck, Tracy, Votaw.
Total, fifty-five.
Voted, That the Chairman appoint a committee to nominate new
members, to report at the next session.
Wm. Byron Forbush,
Recording Secretary.
On behalf of the Directors of the Association, Ex-President San-
ders presented the following resolution of appreciation of the work
of the retiring President, Rev. Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D. It was
unanimously adopted.
RESOLUTION OF APPRECIATION TO DR. HALL
The members of the Religious Education Association in attendance
at this Convention desire to place on record an expression of their
grateful appreciation of the important service rendered by their re-
tiring President, the Rev. Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall, during this criti-
cal year of the history of the Association.
His felicitous presentation of the aims and ideals of the Associa-
tion on many public occasions; his profound faith in its future; his
devotion to its immediate interests; his ability in commending it to
those who are leaders in the life and thought of our nation, — have
given to the movement strength, inspiration, and stability.
Graceful and grateful response was made by President Hall.
The presiding officer announced the election of Rev. WiUiam F.
McDowell, Bishop of the Methodist Espiscopal Church, Chicago,
lUinois, as President of the Association, and introduced the newly
elected First Vice-President, Rev. W. H. P. Faunce, D. D., LL. D.,
President of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, who re-
sponded in behalf of the new President.
The subject of the evening, " How can We Quicken in the Indi-
vidual a Sense of National and Universal Brotherhood, " was discussed
in two addresses, — on " The Sacredness of Citizenship, " by President
William J. Tucker, D. D., LL. D., Dartmouth College, Hanover, New
Hampshire, and on " The Mission of Christianity to the World," by
President Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D., Union Theological Seminary,
New York City.
THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 479
With a prayer by Dean Frank Knight Sanders, Ph. D., D. D., Yale
Divinity School, New Haven, Connnecticut the Third Annual Con-
vention of the ReUgious Education Association was declared to be
ended.
DEPARTMENTAL SESSIONS
The Departmental Sessions of the Convention were held for the
most part on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, from 2 to 6 o'clock.
The several departments and their places and times of meeting were
as follows:
Department I, The Council of Rehgious Education, held sessions,
for members only, in the blue room of Tremont Temple, at 9 A. m. on
Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, and a public session at 10:30 a. m.
Tuesday.
Department II, Universities and Colleges, held two sessions, at
Channing Hall, Unitarian Building, at 4 o'clock on Wednesday and
Thursday afternoons.
Department III, Theological Seminaries, held two sessions, — one
at Lorimer Hall, Tremont Temple, the other at Chipman Hall, Tre-
mont Temple, at 2 o'clock on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons.
Department IV, Churches and Pastors, held two sessions, — one at
Wesleyan Hall, the other at Pilgrim Hall, Congregational House, at
2 o'clock on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons.
Department V, Sunday Schools; held two sessions, — one at Lorimer
Hall, at 4 o'clock Wednesday afternoon; the other, a joint session with
the Department of Teacher-training, at Lorimer Hall, at 2 o'clock
Thursday afternoon.
Department VI, Secondary Pubhc Schools, held two sessions, — one
at Boston University Chapel, the other at Chipman Hall, Tremont
Temple, at 4 o'clock, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons.
Department VII, Elementary Public Schools, held two sessions, —
one in the blue room of Tremont Temple the other at Park Street
Church vestry, at 4 o'clock Wednesday and Thursday afternoons.
Department VIII, Private Schools, held no sessions.
Department IX, Teacher-training, held two sessions, — one at the
blue room, Tremont Temple, Wednesday afternoon at 2 o'clock, the
other, a joint session with the Department of Sunday Schools, at Lori-
mer Hall, Tremont Temple, Thursday afternoon at 2 o'clock.
Department X, Christian Associations, held two sessions, at the
Y. M. C. A. Building at 4 o'clock on Wednesday and Thursday
afternoons.
48o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Department XI, Young People's Societies, held two sessions, — one
at Wesleyan Hall, the other at Pilgrim Hall, Congregational House,
at 4 o'clock on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons.
Department XII, The Home, held two sessions, at Channing Hall,
Unitarian Building, at 2 o'clock Wednesday and Thursday afternoons.
Department XIII, Libraries, held one session, Wednesday afternoon
at 2 o'clock, at the Boston Public Library.
Department XIV, The Press, held one session, Thursday afternoon
at 2 o'clock, at the Twentieth Century Club.
Department XV, Correspondence Instruction, held two sessions, —
one at Park Street Church, Wednesday morning at 12 o'clock, the
other at Small Hall, Unitarian Building, Thursday afternoon at
2 o'clock.
Department XVI, Summer Assemblies, held one session, Wednesday
afternoon at 2 o'clock, at Small Hall, Unitarian Building.
Department XVII, Religious Art and Music, held two sessions, at
Twentieth Century Club, — one on Wednesday afternoon at 2 o'clock,
the other on Thursday afternoon at 4 o'clock.
MINUTES OF THE DEPARTMENTAL MEETINGS
The minutes of the Departmental Meetings are preserved by the
recording secretaries of the departments. The new departmental
officers elected may be seen in the List of Officers of the Association
for the current year, on pp. 483-486, post. The programmes of the
Departmental Meetings are indicated by the addresses reported under
each Department named in the preceding pages of this volume.
AN EXHIBIT OF SUNDAY SCHOOL MATERIAL
An exhibition of religious education, relating to instruction in Prot-
estant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish Sunday schools was arranged by
Rev. Milton S. Littlefield, Rev. W. W. Smith, M. D., Rev. Richard
Morse Hodge, D, D., Committee on Religious Education Exhibit of
the Department of Sunday Schools. The exhibit consisted of plans
of Sunday school buildings, school furniture, text-books, hymn-books,
reference-books for teachers, Sunday school curricula, pictures, print
and relief maps, models of Oriental dwellings, furniture, etc., and note-
books, drawings, relief and surface map^, and other work executed by
Sunday school pupils. Members of the committee in charge were on
hand to explain the exhibits and to give demonstrations in manual
methods of instrution.
THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION
481
THE BOSTON COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS
The local preparations for the Convention and the entertainment
of the Convention during its sessions were admirably provided by a
Committee of more than seventy representative citizens of Boston,
whose names follow:
WiNSHiP, Albert E. Lit. D. Chairman.
Means, Frederick A., Secretary.
Heath, Daniel C., Treasurer.
Allen, Frederick B. Vice-Chairman.
BowNE, Borden P., Ph. D.
Capen, Samuel B., LL.D.
Gushing, Grafton D.
Dole, Charles F.
Dunning, Albert E., D.D.
Eliot, Samuel A., D.D.
Gordon, George A., D.D
Grose, George R.
Hodges, George, D.D.
Mabie, Henry C, D.D.
Parmenter, C. W., Lit. D.
Perin, George L., D.D.
Peabody, Francis G., D.D.
Rowley, Francis H., D.D.
Shaw, William.
Small, Augustus D.
Trueblood, Benjamin F.
Weed, Alonzo R.
Willard, Horace M., Sc.D.
Wright, Theodore F., Ph.D.
HuLiNG, Ray Greene, A.M., Sc.D., Chairman of Finance Committee.
Burr, Everett, D., D.D., Chairman 0} Committee on Halls.
Chandler, Edward H., Chairman 0} Press Committee.
Haskell, Edward H., Chairman of Entertainment Committee.
Williams, Appleton P., Chairman of Local Attendance Committee.
Flanders, Ralph L., Chairman of Music Committee.
Rogers, Dwight L., Chairman of Transportation and Hotel Committee.
Crawford, William C, Chairman of Sight-seeing Committee.
Adams, Charles H.
Bailey, Albert E.
Bentley, Charles N.
Blakeslee, Erastus, D.D.
Boyd, Charles E.
Bradner, Lester, Jr.
Brand, Charles A.
Bridgman, Howard A.
Bushnell, Samuel C.
Childs, Harold C.
Cummings, Edward.
Farrar, Frederick A.
Gardner, Robert H.
Gates, Owen H.
Goodwin, Henry.
Hale, Harris G.
Hartshorn, W. N.
HoRR, George E., D.D.
Humphreys, Richard C.
Lathrop, H. N.
Lewis, Homer P.
Macdougall, H. C.
Main, William W.
Maxwell, Arthur A.
Mehaffey, George W.
Merriam, Edward F.
Mills, Carlton P.
Moore, Edward C, Ph. D., D.D.
Morris, George P.
Morse, Herbert L.
Parker, Frederick C. W.
Parker, Henry C.
Peabody, Henry W.
Peirce, Silas.
Perrin, W. T., D.D.
Sears, Seth.
Shumway, Franklin P.
SwETT, Vernon B.
Wentworth, Oliver M-
WiCKES, Frank S. C.
Willard, Horace Mann, Sc.D.
482 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
THE GENERAL ALLIANCE OF WORKERS WITH BOYS
The General Alliance of Workers with Boys held its annual con-
vention in connection with the ReHgious Education Association. Pub-
lic sessions were held as follows :
Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock in Channing Hall, Unitarian Hall.
Tuesday afternoon at 2 o'clock in Channing Hall, Unitarian Building.
William C. Bitting,
William J. Parker,
Secretaries.
THE OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION
1905
PRESIDENT
William Eraser McDowell Bishop Methodist Episcopal Church
VICE-PRESIDENTS
William Herbert P. Faunce President Brown University, Providence, R. I.
R. Douglas Eraser Editor Sunday School Publications, Toronto, Can.
F. W. GuNSAULUS President Armour Institute, Chicago, 111.
G. Stanley Hall President Clark University, Worcester, Mass.
William Lawrence Bishop of Massachusetts, Boston, Mass.
Hamilton C. Macdougall . .Professor Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass.
William J. McKittrick .... Pastor First Presbyterian Chtrch, St. Louis, Mo.
Frank N. McMurry Professor Columbia University, New York City.
Richard G. Moulton Professor University of Chicago, Chicago, 111.
Cyrus Northrop President University of Minnesota, Minneapolis,
Minn.
L. Clark Seelye President Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
Appleton p. Williams President Massachusetts Sunday School Associa-
tion, Boston, Mass.
Benjamin Ide Wheeler . . . President University of California, Berkeley, Cal.
EXECUTIVE BOARD
The general officers 0} the Association, ex-officio
President, William Eraser McDowell, Bishop Methodist Episcopal Church.
First Vice-President, William Herbert P. Faunce, President Brown University,
Providence.
General Secretary, Clifford W. Barnes, Chicago, 111.
Recording Secretary, George Albert Coe, Professor Northwestern University
Evanston, 111.
Treasurer, James H. Eckels, President Commercial National Bank, Chicago, 111.
CHAIRMAN OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD
William Rainey Harper .... President University of Chicago, Chicago, 111.
VICE-CHAIRMAN
L. Wilbur Messer General Secretary Y. M. C. A., Chicago, 111.
William Lowe Bryan President Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind.
John M. Coulter Professor University of Chicago, Chicago, 111;
David R. Forgan Vice-President First National Bank, Chicago, 111.
Charles H. Hulburd President Elgin National Watch Company, Chi-
cago, 111.
Charles Cuthbert Hall . . . President Union Theological Seminary, New York
City.
483
484 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Walter L. Hervey Examiner Board of Education, New York City.
Charles S. Holt Attorney and Counselor at Law, Chicago, 111.
Charles L. Hutchinson Vice-President Corn Exchange Bank, Chicago.IU.
Henry Churchill King .... President Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio.
William Douglas|MacKenzie, President Hartford Theological Seminary,
Hartford, Conn.
William P. Merrill Pastor Sixth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, 111.
GiFFORD PiNCHOT Commissioner of Forestry, Washington, D. C.
George L. Robinson Professor McCormick Theological Seminary Chi-
cago, 111.
Frank Knight Sanders Dean Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Conn.
William Shaw Treasurer United Society Christian Endeavor,
Boston, Mass
Herbert L. Willett Professor University of Chicago, Chicago, 111.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
DIRECTORS FOR LIFE
Frank Knight Sanders, Ph. D., D. D., Dean Yale Divinity School, New
Haven, Conn.
Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D President Union Theological Semi-
nary, New York City.
DIRECTORS AT LARGE
Nolan R. Best Associate Editor The Interior, Chicago
111.
Nehemiah Boynton, D. D Pastor First Congregational Church,
Detroit, Mich.
Edward L. Curtis, D. D Professor Yale Divinity School, New
Haven, Conn.
Samuel A. Eliot, D. D President Unitarian Association, Bos-
ton, Mass.
Robert A. Falconer, LL. D Professor Presbyterian College, Hali-
fax, N. S.
Calvin H. French President Huron College, Huron,
South Dakota.
Richard D. Harlem, D. D President Lake Forest College, Lake
Forest, 111.
Rev. Pascal Harrower Chairman Sunday School Commis-
sion Diocese New York, New York
City.
Richard C. Cecil Hughes, D. D President Ripon College, Ripon, Wis.
Robert L. Kelley, Ph. M President Earlham College, Rich-
mond, Ind.
James H. Kirkland Chancellor Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tenn.
John E. McFayden, A. M Professor Knox College, Toronto,
Canada.
Walter Miller Professor Tulane University, New
Orleans, La.
Samuel C. Mitchell, Ph. D Professor Richmond College, Rich
mond, Va.
THE OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION 485
Allen B. Philputt, D. D Pastor Central Christian Church,
Indianapolis, Ind.
Edwin F. See General Secretary The Young Men's
Christian Association, Brooklyn,
New York.
Charles H. Snedeker Dean St. Paul's Cathedral, Cincinnati,
Ohio.
Henry A. Stimson, D. D Pastor Manhattan Congregational
Church, New York City.
Floyd W. Tomkins, D. D Rector Holy Trinity Protestant Epis-
copal Church, Philadelphia, Pa.
William J. Tucker, D. D., LL. D President Dartmouth College, Hano-
ver, N. H.
STATE DIRECTORS
California, John K. McLean, D. D., President Pacific Theological Seminary,
Berkeley.
Colorado, William F. Slocum, LL. D. President Colorado College, Colorado
Springs.
Z)/5/r/c/ 0/ C<?/Mmi)/a, GiFFORD PiNCHOT, Commissioner of Forestry, Washington.
Illinois, W. E. Barton, LL. D. Pastor Congregational Church, Oak Park.
Indiana, William P. Kane, D. D., President Wabash College, Crawfordsville.
Iowa, Arthur Fairbanks, Ph. D., Professor State University of Iowa.
Kansas, Frank Strong, Ph.'D., President of University of Kansas, Lawrence.
Kentucky, H. D. C. Maclachlan, A. M., Pastor Christian Church, Shelbyville.
Louisiana, E. B. Craighead, President Tulane University, New Orleans
Maine, Alfred W. Anthony, D. D., Professor Cobb Divinity School, Lewiston.
Massachusetts, Ray G. Huling, Head Master English High School, Cambridge.
Minnesota, William H. Sallmon, A. M., President Carlton College, Northfield.
Michigan, George Elliott,D. D., Pastor Central Methodist Episcopal Church,
Detroit.
Mississippi, Robert B. Fulton, LL. D., Chancellor University of Mississippi.
Missouri, James H. Garrison, LL. D., Editor Christian EvangeHst, St. Louis.
Nebraska, Rev. John E. Tuttle, D. D., Pastor First Congregational Church, Lin-
coln.
New Hampshire, Herman H. Horne, Ph. D., Professor Dartmouth College,
Hanover.
New Jersey, Harry Augustus G.\rfield, Professor Princeton University, Prince-
ton.
New York, William C. Bitting, D. D., Pastor Mt. Morris Baptist Church, New
York City.
North Carolina, JosiAH W. Bailey, Editor Biblical Recorder, Raleigh.
North Dakota, Edward H. Stickney, State Superintendent Congregational Sun-
day School and Publishing Society, Fargo.
Ohio, Charles F. Thwing, D. D., LL. D., President Western Reserve University,
Cleveland.
Oregon, Edgar P. Hill, Pastor First Presbyterian Church, Portland.
Pennsylvania, Joseph Swain, LL. D., President Swarthmore College, Swarthmore.
Rhode Island, LESTER Bradnee, Jr., Ph. D., Rector St. John's Epsicopal Church,
Providence.
486 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
South Carolina, A. J. S. Thomas, Editor Baptist Courier, Greenville.
South Dakota, Thomas Nicholson, D. D., President Dakota University, Mitchell.
Tennessee, B. L. WiGGiNS, Vice-Chancellor University of the South, Sewanee.
Texas, J. Frank Smith, Pastor First Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Dallas.
Vermont, Harry R. Miles, Pastor Central Congregational Church, Brattleboro.
Washington, Stephen B. L. Penrose, President Whitman College, Walla Walla.
DEPARTMENT OFFICERS
I. THE COUNCIL OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
president
Sanders, Frank K., Ph. D. D.
14 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.
recording secretary
Forbush, Rev. William B., Ph. D.
New York City
executive secretary
CoE, George A., Ph. D.
Professor Northwestern University, Evanston, 111.
Hervey, Walter L., M. A., New York City.
Doggett, L. L., Ph.D., Springfield, Mass.
King, Henry Churchill, D.D., Oberlin, Ohio.
//. UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES
president
Swain, Joseph, LL. D.
President Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pa.
RECORDING SECRETARY
Hazard, Caroline, A.M., Litt.D.
President Welksley College, Welltsley, Mass.
Thompson, William O., D. D., LL. D.
President Ohio State University, Columbus, O.
EXECUTIVE secretary
Alderman, Edvi^in A., D. C. L., LL. D.
President University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.
Bowne, Borden P., D. D.
Professor Boston University, Boston, Mass.
Jesse, Richard H., LL. D.
President University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo.
King, William F., D. D., LL. D.
President Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, Iowa.
Peabody, Francis G., D. D.
Dean Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass.
THE OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION 487
///. THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES
president
Mackenzie, Rev. William Douglas, D. D.
President Hartford Theological Seminary, Hartford, Conn.
recording secretary
Stuart, Ch.\rles, M., D. D.
Professor Sacred Rhetoric, Garrett Biblical Institute, Evanston, 111.
EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
Mathews, Shailer, A. M., D. D.
Professor University of Chicago, Chicago, 111.
Brown, William Adams, Ph. D., D. D.
Professor Union Theological Seminary, New York City.
Hayes, Doremus A., Ph. D., LL. D.
Professor Garrett BibUcal Institute, Evanston, 111.
Jacobus, Melancthon W., D. D., LL. D.
Professor Hartford Theological Seminary, Hartford, Conn.
Nash, Henry Sylvester, D. D.
Professor Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Mass.
IV. CHURCHES AND PASTORS
president
Barnes, Rev. L. Call, D. D.
Pastor First Baptist Church, Worcester, Mass.
Nason, Rev. Geo. Frank, A. M.
New Rochelle, N. Y.
executive secretary
Grosser, Rev. John R., D. D.
Pastor Kenwood Evangelical Church, Chicago, 111.
Elliott, Rev. Geo., D. D.
Pastor Park Central Methodist Episcopal Church, Detroit, Mich.
Hitchcock, Rev. Albert W.
Pastor Second Congregational Church, Worcester, Mass.
Hale, Rev. Edward Everett, D. D., LL. D.
Chaplain of the United States Senate, Washington, D. C.
MoxOM, Rev. Philip S., D. D.
Pastor Second Congregational Church, Springfield, Mass.
Van Kirk, Rev. Robert W.
Pastor First Baptist Church, Jackson, Mich.
McVicKAR, William N., D. D., S. T. D.
Bishop Diocese of Rhode Island, Providence, R. I.
V. SUN DA Y SCHOOLS
president
Stewart, George B., D. D., LL. D.
President Auburn Theological Seminary, Auburn, N. Y.
488 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
RECORDING SECRETARY
DxiNNiNG, Albert E., D. D.
Editor The Congregationalist, 14 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.
EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
Stuart, Charles M., A. M., D. D.
Professor Garrett Biblical Institute, Evanston, III.
Brown, Marianna C, Ph. D.
35 West One Hundred and Thirtieth Street, New York City.
Burr, Everett D., D. D.
Newton Center, Mass.
Burton, Ernest De Witt, D. D.
Professor University of Chicago, Chicago, 111.
Du Bois, Patterson,
Westchester, Pa.
Harrower, Rev. Pascal, A. M.
West New Brighton, N. Y.
Mead, George W., D. D.
Newjjort, R. I.
Littlefield, Rev. Milton S.
IIS4 Madison Avenue, New York City.
VI. SECONDARY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
president
Huling, Ray Greene, A. M., Sc. D.
Head Master English High School, Cambridge, Mass.
RECORDING SECRETARY
Rynearson, Edward, A. M.
Director of High Schools, Pittsburg, Pa.
EXECUTIVE secretary
Locke, George H., A. M.
Dean .School of Education, University of Chicago; Editor School Review,
Chicago, 111.
Bishop, J. Remsen, Ph. D.
Principal Walnut Hills High School, Cincinnati, O.
Smiley, William H.
Principal East Side High School, Denver, Col.
Smith, Charles Alden, A. M.
Principal Central High School, Duluth, Minn.
VII. ELEMENTARY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
president
Hervey, Walter L., Ph. D.
Examiner Board of Education, New York City
THE OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION 489
RECORDING SECRETARY
RowE, Stewart H., Ph. D.
Supervising Principal Lovell School District of New Haven, and Lecturer Yale
University, New Haven, Conn.
EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
Carr, John W., A. M.
Superintendent of Schools, Anderson, Ind.
Boone, Richard G., A. M., Ph. D.
Supertendent of Schools, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Hatch, William H.
Superintendent of Schools, Oak Park, 111.
Hughes, J. L.
Inspector of Schools, Toronto, Can.
Lane, Albert G., A. M.
Assistant Superintendent of Schools, Chicago, 111.
Nicholson, Mary E.
Principal Normal School, Indianapolis, Ind.
Thurber, Charles H., Ph. D.
Messrs. Ginn & Co., 20 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.
Van Sickle, James H., A. M.
Superintendent of Instruction, Baltimore, Md.
VIII. PRIVATE SCHOOLS
PRESIDENT
McPherson, Simon J., D. D.
Head Master Lawrenceville School, Lawrenceville, N. J.
recording secretary
Carman, George Noble,
Director Lewis Institute, Chicago, 111.
executive secretary
Sloane, Joseph C
Head Master Lake Forest School, Lake Forest, 111.
Abercrombie, D. W., LL. D.
Principal Worcester Academy, Worcester, Mass.
Bliss, Frederick L., A. M.
Principal Detroit University School, Detroit, Mich.
Bragdon, C. C.
Principal Lasell Seminary, Aubumdale, Mass.
Johnson, Franklin W., A. M.
Principal Cobum Classical Institute, Waterville, Me.
Webb, J. M., LL. D.
Principal Webb School, Bellbuckle, Tenn.
Wood, Walter M.
Superintendent of Education, Young Men's Christian Association, Chicago, III.
490 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
IX. TEACHER-TRAINING
PRESIDENT
HoRNE, Herman D., Ph. D.
Professor Dartmouth College, Dartmouth, N. H.
recording secretary
Hodge, Richard M., D. D.
Director Courses for Lay Workers, Union Theological Seminary, New York City.
executive secretary
Hansel, John W.
President Y. M. C. A. Institute and Training School, Chicago, 111.
Brown, Marianna C, Ph. D.
35 West One Hundred and Thirtieth Street, New York City.
Patten, Amos W., D. D.
Professor Northwestern University, Evanston, 111.
Pease, George W.
Professor Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy, Hartford, Conn.
Reeder, R. R., Ph. D.
Superintendent New York Orphan Asylum, Hastings-on-Hudson, N. Y.
SCHAEFFER, N. C, Ph. D., D. D., LL. D.
State Superintendent of Instruction, 546 West James Street, Lancaster, Pa.
St. John, Edward P.
Superintendent New York State Sunday School Association, Prattsburgh, N. Y.
Starbuck, Edwin D., Ph. D.
Earlhara College, Richmond, Ind.
X. CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS
president
See, Edwin F.
General Secretary Young Men's Christian Association, 502 Fulton Street,
Brooklyn, N. Y.
recording secretary
Rosevear, Henry E.
State Executive Secretary Young Men's Christian Association, Louisville, Ky.
EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
Parker, William J.
Assistant General Secretary Young Men's Christian Association, Chicago, 111.
BuDD, George S.
State Secretary Young Men's Christian Association, Columbus, O.
Frost, Edward W.
Member State Executive Committee Young Men's Christian Association; Milwau-
kee, Wis. i
Hansel, John W.
President Y. M. C. A. Institute, Chicago.
THE OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION 491
JuDSON, Mrs. Charles N.
President Board of Trustees International Board of Young Women's Ciiristian
Association; President Brooklyn Young Women's Christian Association, Brooklyn,
N. V.
Messer, Mrs. L. W.
Recording Secretary American Committee, Chicago, 111.
MtJRRAY, William D.
Member International Committee Young Men's Christi an Association, Plainfield,
N.J.
DOGGETT, L.L., D. D.
Springfield, Mass.
XI. YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETIES
president
Forbush, Rev. William B., Ph. D.
New York City
recording secretary
Wells, Amos R.
Managing Editor Christian Endeavor World, Boston, Mass.
executive secretary
Howe, James L., Ph. D.
Professor Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va.
Jenkins, Burris A., A. M., D. D.
President Kentucky University, Lexington, Ky.
LiNDSEY, Hon. Benjamin
Judge of County Court, Denver, Colo.
Meeser, Spenser B., D. D.
Pastor Woodward Avenue Baptist Church, Detroit, ^'Iich.
Shaw, William,
Treasurer United Society of Christian Endeavor, Boston, Mass.
Stevenson, Andrew,
President Young Men's Presbyterian Union, Chicago, 111.
Taylor, S. Earl,
Editorial Staff, Epworth League Bible Courses, New York City.
Williams, Appleton D.
President Massachusetts Sunday School Association, West Upton, Mass.
XII. THE HOME
president
Henderson, Charles Richmond, Ph. D., D. D.
Professor University of Chicago, Chicago, 111.
recording secretary
Miller, Mrs. Emily Huntington
57 Trumbull Street, New Haven, Conn.
492 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
executive secretary
McLeish, Mrs. Andrew
Glencoe. 111.
Greeley, Morris
, Glencoe, 111.
Harrison, Elizabeth,
Principal Kindergarten College, Chicago, 111.
Henrotin, Mrs. Charles,
Chicago, 111.
MacClintock, Mrs. W. D.
Chicago, 111.
Starbuck, Edwin D., Ph. D.
Earlham College, Richmond, Ind.
Taylor, Graham, D. D.
Professor Chicago Theological Seminary; Warden of Chicago Commons, Chicago,
111.
XIII. LIBRARIES
president
Bowerman, George F., B. L. S.
Librarian Public Library District of Columbia, Washington, D. C.
recording secretary
Lindsay, Mary B.
Librarian Free Public Library, Evanston, 111.
executive secretary
Gates, Herbert W.
Librarian Chicago Theological Seminary, Chicago, 111.
Brett, William H.
Librarian Public Library, Cleveland, O.
Canfield, James H., LL. D.
Librarian Columbia University, New York City
Fletcher, William L, A. M.
Librarian Amherst College, Amherst, Mass.
MacClintock, Mrs. William D.
5629 Lexington Avenue, Chicago, 111.
MuLLiNS, Edgar Young, D. D., LL. D.
President Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky
Rhees, Rush, D. D., LL. D.
President University of Rochester, Rochester, N. Y.
Robinson, Willard H.
Pastor First Presbyterian Church, Englewood, 111.
XIV. THE PRESS
president
Bridgman, Howard A.
Managing Editor The Congregationalist, Boston, Mass.
THE OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION 493
recording secretary
Young, Rev. Jesse Bowman D. D.
Pastor Walnut Hills Methodist Episcopal Church, Cincinnati, O.
executive secretary
Ellis, William T.
Religious Editor Philadelphia Press, Philadelphia, Pa.
Abbott, Ernest H.
Associate Editor The Outlook, New York City.
Best, Nolan R.
Associate Editor The Interior, Chicago, 111.
CoNANT, Thomas O., LL. D.
Editor The Examiner, New York City.
Garrison, James H., LL. D.
Editor Christian Evangelist, St. Louis, Mo.
McKelway, a. J.
Editor Presbyterian Standard, Charlotte, N. C.
XV. CORRESPONDENCE INSTRUCTION
president
recording secretary
Mallory, Hervey F.
Secretary Correspondence-Study Department, University of Chicago, Chicago, 111.
executive secretary
Cuninggim, Jesse Lee
Director Correspondence School Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Vanderbili
University, Nashville, Tenn.
Anthony, Alfred W., D. D.
Professor Cobb Divinity School, Lewiston, Me.
Chamberlin, Georgia L.
Executive Secretary American Institute of Sacred Literature, Chicago, 111.
CoLLEDGE, William A., D. D.
Dean American School of Correspondence at Armour Institute of Technology,
Chicago, 111.
Innis, George S., Ph. D., D. D.
Professor Hamline University; President College Section Minnesota Educational
Association, St. Paul, Minn.
Kimball, Kate F.
Executive Secretary Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, Chicago, 111.
XVI. SUMMER ASSEMBLIES
president
Vincent, George E., Ph. D.
Professor University of Chicago; Principal of Chautauqua Instruction, Chicago, 111.
recording secretary
Horswell, Charles, Ph. D., D. D.
Pastor Union Church, Kenilworth, 111.
494 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
HuLLEY, Lincoln, Ph. D.
President John B. Stetson University, De Land, Fla.
Dabney, Charles W., Ph. D., LL. D.
President University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tenn.
Falconer, Robert A., Lit. D., LL. D.
Principal Presbyterian College, Halifax, N. S.
Parks, Edward L., D. D.
Professor Gammon Theological Seminary, South Atlanta, Ga.
PiLCHER, M. B.
Manager Monteagle Summer Assembly, Nashville, Tenn.
XVII. RELIGIOUS ART AND MUSIC
president
Winchester, Caleb T., L. H. D.
Professor Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn.
recording secretary
Beard, Harington
624 Nicollet Avenue, Minneapolis, Minn.
executive secretary
Pratt, Waldo S., Mus. D.
Professor Hartford Theological Seminary, Hartford, Conn.
Bailey, Henry Turner
Agent Massachusetts Board of Education, North Scituate, Mass.
Cady, J. Cleveland
6 West Twenty-second Street, New York City.
Farnsworth, Charles H.
Professor of Music, Columbia University, New York City.
Gow, George C, Mus. D.
Professor Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N. Y
MacClintock, William D.
Professor University of Chicago, Chicago, 111.
Magee, Harriet Cecil
Teacher State Normal School, Oshkosh, Wis.
THE MEMBERS OF THE ASSOCIATION
ALABAMA
Bates, Geo. E., Rev.
Brown, Walter S., Rev.
Clarke, Almon T., Rev.
Dillingham, Pitt, Rev.
Harte, a. C, Rev.
Maness, Plato Griffin
Metcalf, John M. P.
Mitchell, B. G., Rev., A. M.
MURFEE, H. O., A. M.
Rice, John A., Rev.
Snedecor, James G., Rev.
ARIZONA
Schafer, F. H., Rev.
ARKANSAS
Barrett, Frank, Rev.
HoLLETT, C. M., Ph.D., D.D.
Little, Fred, Rev.
Reynolds, John Hugh, A. M.
Walls, Polk W., A. M.
institutions
Hendrix College
Ouachita College
CALIFORNIA
Allison, William Henry, Rev.
Bade, William F., Ph. D.
Baldwin, Cyrus G., Rev.
Bement, Howard, Ph. D.
Boyd, Thomas, Rev., D. D.
Brewer, John Marks, B. S.
Briggs, Arthur H., Rev., D. D.
Briggs, Herbert F., Rev., S. T. B.
Brown, Arthur P., Rev.
Brown, Charles R., Rev.
Brown, Elmer E., Ph. D.
BucKHAM, John W., A. B.
Day, Thomas F., D. D.
Day, William Horace, Rev., A. M.
Dennett, Edward Power, Rev., D.D.
Ferguson, Wilbert P.
Fisher, Charles R.
Fulmer, L. Roy, S. T. B.
Kellogg, Francis B.
Kling, W. a.
Leavitt, Bradford, Rev.
Lloyd, Louis D., Rev.
Lovejoy, Irving Roscoe, Rev., A. M.,
S. T. B.
Macaulay, Joseph P., Rev.
Maile, John L., Rev.
Marston, Geo. W.
McLean, John Knox, D. D.
Mills, Benj. D.
Mowbray, Henry B., Rev.
Nash, Charles S., A. M., D. D.
Palmer, Burton M., Rev.
Parsons, Edward Lambe, Rev., A. B.
Patten, Arthur B., Rev.
Roger, Jay Geo. Rev., Ph. D.
RuESS, Christopher, Rev.
ScuDDER, William H., Rev.
Sibley, Josiah, Rev.
Smither, a. C, Rev., A. M.
spr.a.gue, o. s. a.
Van Kirk, Hiram, Rev., Ph. D.
White, Sherman M., Rev.
White, Willis G., Rev.
Wicher, Arthur A., Rev., A. M., B.D.
Williams, Wm. John, Rev., B. D.
Zahn, Edwin L.
institutions
Irving Institute
Pacific Theological Seminary
Sunday School Commission of the
Diocese of California
Trinity Methodist Episcopal Sun-
day School
Unitarian Theological School
495
496
THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
COLORADO
Alderson, Victor C.
Countermine, J. L., Rev., D.D.
Banner, William Mason
Eggleston, Julius Wooster
Forward, DeWitt Daniel, Rev., A.M.
Gove, Aaron, LL. D.
Johnson, S. Arthur
Kimball, Clarence O., Rev., Ph. D.
Parson, Edward S., A. M., B. D.,
Litt. D.
Patton, Horace B., Ph. D.
Petty, Orville A., Rev.
PiNKHAM, Henry W., Rev.
Slocum, William F., Rev., LL. D.
Smiley, William H.
Tyler, B. B;, Rev., D. D.
Webb, Clarence E., Rev.
Work, Edgar A., Rev., D. D.
CONNECTICUT
AcKERMAN, Arthur W., Rev., D. D.
AcKLEY, J. B., Rev., A. M.
Adams, John Coleman, Rev., A. M.,
D.D.
Addison, Charles Morris, Rev.
Allen, E. K.
Ashworth, Robert A., Rev.
Bacon, BenjaminW., Rev., D. D.,
Litt. D.
Barbour, John Humphrey, Mrs.
Bates, E. J.
Beadle, Harry A., Rev., A. B.
Beard, Gerald H., Ph. D.
Berry, Louis F., Rev.
Bigelow, Warren Daniels, A. M.
BiNNEY, John, Rev., D. D.
Bishop, N. Lee.
Blakeley, Quincy, Rev.
Brown, T. Edwin, Rev., D. D.
Burnham, Waterman R.
Burt, Enoch Hale, Rev., A. M.
BusHEE, George A., Rev.
Calhoun, Newell M., Rev.
Carter, Frederic R., Rev.
Cone, Mary Gates, Miss
Colt, Luman C.
CoLTON, Alcott, B.
Craig, Geo. A.
Cummings, Mrs. W. H.
Curtis, Edward L., Rev., Ph. D.,
D. D.
Cutler, Ralph W. Mrs.
Davis, William H.
Dawson, George E., Ph. D.
Devitt, Theophilus. S., Rev., Ph.D.,
D.D.
DoANE, Frank B.,Rev., B. D.
Elmer, Franklin D., Rev.
Ensign, Joseph R., M. A.
Evans, S. E.
Friborg, Emil, Rev.
Garfield, John P., Rev.
Gerrie, a. W., Rev.
Gillett, a. L., Prof.
Grant, John Hiram, Rev.
Greene, Frederick W., Rev.
Hall, William H.
Hazen, Austin, Rev.
Hazen, Azel W., Rev., D. D.
HiLLiARD, Mary R.
Holmes, William T., Rev.
Hotchkiss, Ada S.
Hull, Robert Chipman, Rev., A. B.
Hyde, Frederick S., Rev.
Hyde, George F.
Ives, Charles L. Mrs.
Jacquith, Chas. a.
*Jacobus, Melancthon W., D. D.,
LL. D.
Kellogg, George A., Mrs. A. B.
Kelsey, Henry H., Rev.
Kent, Charles F., Ph. D.
Kidder, B. F., Rev., Ph. D.
*Knight, Edward H., Rev.
Landers, Warren P., Rev.
Lathrop, William G., Rev.
Leete, William White, D. D.
Lewis, Everett E., Rev.
LoTZE, William G.
Lutz, Adam R., Rev., A. M.
^Mackenzie, William Douglas,
D.D.
Marsh, F. W.
Mathews, S. Sherberne, Rev., D. D.
Maurer, Oscar E.
McAllister, Cloyd N.
McDuffee, Chas. Brown, Rev., A. B.,
B. D.
Miller, Emily Huntington Mrs.
Mitchell, Edwin Knox, D. D.
Mutch, William J., Rev., Ph. D.
Olmstead, Edgar H., Rev.
Pease, George W.
Perkins, Henry A.
Persons, F. P.
Phelps, Oscar A.
Porter, Frank C, Ph. D., D. D.
Porter, Lucius Chapin
Potter, Rockwell Harmon, Rev.
Pratt, Lewellyn, Rev., D. D.
Pratt, Waldo S., Mus. D.
Ranney, William W., Rev.
THE MEMBERS OF THE ASSOCIATION
497
Rice, William N., Ph. D., LL. D.
Richmond, Geo. C, Rev.
Roberts, H. B., Rev.
Robinson, Charles F., Rev.
Rodman, Emily T.
Sanfokd, Charles E., M. D.
Sanford, Ralph A.
Sears, Langley Barn.\s, Rev.
Smith, Mrs. Eliza I.
Smith, Erwin K.
Sneath, E. Hershey, Ph. D., LL. D.
St. John, Edward P.
Stearns, William F., Rev., A. M.
Strong, Frederick C.
Talmadge, Elliott Ford, Rev.
Terrill, Bertha, Miss
Thayer, Charles S., Ph. D.
TiMM, John A., Rev.
Tuthill, Wm. B., Rev.
Tweedy, Henry Hallam, Rev.
Twichell, Joseph H., Rev.
Walker, Williston, Ph. D., D. D.
Walkley, Frances S.
Webster, Lillian M.
West, Lester L., Rev., D. D.
White, Charles E.
Williams, Mary L.
Williams, Samuel H.
Wilson, Edna E.
Winchester, Caleb T., L. H. D.
Worcester, Edward S., Rev.
institutions
First Baptist Sunday School
Hartford Theological Seminary
Yale University Library
DELAWARE
D.\NFORTH Nathan B.
institutions
Wilmington Institute Free Library
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Amos, Henry Cooper
Craig, Arthur W., B. S.
Emerson, Sara A.
Foster, Mrs. J. Ellen
Johnson, B. F.
Lamson, Franklin S.
Moorland, J. E.
Pierce, Lyman L.
Pinchot, Gifford
Power, Frederick D., Rev., LL. D.
Rideout, Melvin B.
Simon, Abram
TwiTCHELL, Francis, Miss
Warnman, Frederick Conover
institutions
New Church League of Young Peo-
ple's Societies
Norton, Helen S., A. M.
FLORIDA
I Welch, Moses C, Rev., A. M.
GEORGIA
Cree, Harvard T., Rev.
KiLPATRicK, William Heard, A. M.
KiRBYE, J. Edward, Rev.
Maclean, Joseph
Parks, Edward L., D. D.
Sale, George, Rev., A. M.
Ware, Edward T., Rev.
institutions
Atlanta Theological Seminary
Carnegie Library, of Atlanta
University of Georgia Library
MiLLiKEN, Charles D., Rev.
Roth, James A.
HAWAII
I SCUDDER, DOREMUS, D. D., M. D.
498
THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
ILLINOIS
Abel, Clarence, Rev.
Adams, J. B.
Adams, Edwin Augustus, Rev., D.D.
Allen, Mrs. Anna Beck, A. M.
Allworth, John, Rev.
Ames,Edward Scribner, Rev., Ph.D.
Atkinson, P. C.
Bailey, Edward P.
Baird, Lucius O., Rev.
Baldwin, Henry R.
fBALDWiN, Jesse A.
Barnes, Clifford W., A. M.
fBARTLETT, AdOLPHUS C.
Barton, William E., Rev., D. D.
Bateson, Frederick W., Rev., A.M.
Beard, Frederica
Beaton, David, Rev., D. D.
Beck, Lafayette D., Rev.
Becker, Abraham G.
Belfield, Henry H.
Benninghoff, Harry Baxter, Ph.B.
Bentall, E. G., Rev.
Bergen, Abram G., Rev., A. M.
Best, Nolan R.
Best, William
Bestor, O. p.. Rev.
Blair, John A., Rev.
Booth, W. Vernon
Bronson, Solon C, D. D.
Brouse, Olin R., a. M.
Brown, Daniel M.
Brown, George P.
Brown, James A., Rev.
Brown, William L.
Bryant, Stowell L., Rev.
Burgess, Isaac B.
Burlingame, George E., Rev., D. D.
BuRNHAM, Frederick W., Rev.
Burns, William M.
Burt, Frank H.
Burton, Ernest DeWitt, D. D.
Burtt, Joseph B., A. B., LL. B.
Burwell, Leslie M., A. B., D. B.
Butler, John Harding
Butler, Nathaniel, A. M., D. D.
Byrnes, John H., M. D.
Campbell, James M., Rev., D. D.
Cantwell, J. S., Rev., A. M., D. D.
Carman, George Noble
Carr, Clyde M.
Carrier, Augustus S., D. D.
Carus, Paul, LL. D.
Chalmers, James, Rev., D. D.
Chamberlin, Georgia L.
Chamberlin, Orlando E.
Chase, Wayland J.
Clark, Maud G., Mrs.
*tCoE, George Albert, Ph. D.
Cole, John Adams
CoLLEDGE, William A., D. D.
Cook, John W., A. M., LL. D.
Cook, Mrs. Elizabeth B., A. M.
Cooke, Ralph W.
Cope, Henry F., Rev.
*Coulter, John Merle, Ph. D.
Craig, Eber E.
Grosser, John R., Rev., D. D.
Crouse, J. N. Mrs.
Culton, Anna
Curtis, Edward H., Rev., D. D.
Dark, Charles L., Rev.
Day, W. H.
Dean, LasCasas L.
De Blois, Austen Kennedy, Rev.,
D.D.
Dewhurst, Frederic E., Rev., D. D.
Dexter, Stephen B., Rev.
Dickerson, J. Spencer
Dickey, Samuel, A. M.
Dodds, Robert, M. D.
Dougherty, Newton C, Ph. D.
Driver, John M., Rev., D. D.
fEcKELS, James Herron
Ehler, George W., C. E.
EisELEN, Frederick C.
Elliott, Ashley J.
Ensign, Frederick G.
ExLEY, C. A., A. B.
Eyles, William J., Rev.
Fairman, Jane
Faville, John, Rev., Ph. D., D. D.
Fensham, Florence A., B. D.
Ferguson, William D.
Field, Marshall
Flint, Joseph F., Rev.
Ford, J. S.
Ford, S. T., Rev., D. D.
Foster, George B.
Freeman, Henry V., A. M.
French, Howard D., Rev.
Fritter, Enoch A., A. M.
Frost, Henry Hoag
Frost, T. P., Rev., D. D.
Gammon, Robt. W., Rev.
Galbreath, Mrs. William F.
Gates, Herbert Wright
George, Joseph Henry, Ph.D., D.D.
Gilbert, Newell D.
Gilbert, Simeon, Rev., D. D.
Grant, Lillian White, Mrs.
Gray, George W., D. D.
Greeley, Morris L.
Green, Jessie L.
Greene, Ben/amin A., Rev., D. D.
Greenman, a. V.
Greenwood, Victor L. Rev.
Griffith, Mrs. Jennie S.
Gulliver, Julia H.
Gunsaulus, Frank W., Rev., D. D.
*tHAEGER, ThUSNELDA, Ph. B.
THE MEMBERS OF THE ASSOCIATION
499
Hagstrom, G. Arvid, Rev.
*Hansel, John W.
Hardinge, Margaret
Harker, Joseph R., Ph. D.
Harlan, Richard D., Rev., D. D.
Harper, Edward T., Ph. D.
*tHARPER, William R., Ph. D., D.
D., LL. D
Hartwell, H. Linwood, Rev.
Hartzell, Morton C, Rev.
Hatch, William H.
Hawkins, H. B.
Hawley, Fred V., Rev.
Hayes, Doremus A., Ph. D., S.T.D.,
LL. D.
fHEGELER, Edward C.
*Henderson, Charles R., Ph. D., D.
D.
Henkle, William H.
Herrick, Henry M., Rev., A. M.,
Ph.D.
Heuver, G. D., Rev.
Hibbard, Mary B., Mrs.
Hieronymus, Robert E., A. M.
HoDSON, D. L.
Holgate, Thomas F., Ph. D.
Holmgren, J. A.
fHoLT, Charles S.
Hopkins, Florence E.
Horswell, Charles, Rev., Ph. D.,
D. D.
Hotton, J. Sidney
HoucHENS, Walter O.
Howe, George H., Ph. D.
Howell, C. B. D.
Houtll, W. J., Rev., A. B.
Hulbert, Eri B., D. D., LL. D.
tHuTCHiNSON, Charles L.
Jackson, John L., Rev., D. D.
James, Edmund J., Ph. D., LL. D.
Johonnot, R. F., Rev.
Jones, Jenkin Lloyd, Rev.
Jones, Lester Bartlett, A. B.
Jones, Silas, A. M., D. B.
Kimball, Frank
Kimball, Kate F.
Klng, a., Mr.
Lahman, William H.
Lane, Albert G., A. M.
Lanphear, H. M., Mrs.
Latham, H. L., A. M., S. T. M.
Laughlin, J. W., Rev., D. D.
ILawson, Victor F.
Leavitt, J. A., Rev., D. D.
Lester, A. G.
Lewis, F. G., Prof.
Lindsay, Alfred L.
Lindsay, Mary B.
Little, Arthur M., Rev., Ph. D.
Little, R. M., Rev.
LoBA, Jean Frederic, Rev., D. D.
Locke, George H., A. M.
Lord, John B., Mrs.
Lov\t)en, Frank O.
Lynn, Jay Elwood, Rev., A. M.
MacChesney, Nathan W.
MacClintock, William D.
MacClintock, William D. Mrs.
MacMillan, Thomas C.
Mallory, Hervey F.
Marsh, Charles A.
Martin, M. W.
Mason, Hattie D., Mrs.
Mathews, Shailer, A. M., D. D.
Matz, Rudolph
McCollum, G. T., Rev.
McCormick, Harold F.
fMcCoRMiCK, Stanley M.
McCulloch, Frank H.
*McDowELL, William Eraser, Ph. D.,
S. T. D.
McKee, William P., A. M.
McKibben, William K.
McKiNLOCK, Geo. A.
McLean, Lester, Jr.
McLeish, Andrew
*McLeish, Andrew, Mrs.
McMiLLEN, W. F., Rev., D. D.
McWiLLiAMS, Lafayette '"^
Merrill, William P., Rev., D. D.
*tMESSER, L. Wilbur
Messer, L. Wilbur, Mrs.
Metcalf, Paul H., Rev.
Miller, J. E., A. M.
Miller, Kerby S., Rev
Milligan, Henry Forsythe, A. M.
Mills, John Nelson, Rev., A. M.,
D. D.
Moncrief, John W.
Moor, George Caleb, Rev., A. M.,
Ph.D.
moorehead, frederick b., d. d. s.,
M. D.
Morgan, Oscar T., Rev., Ph. D.
Mudge, Elisha, Rev.
Munger, Orett L.
Nelson, Aaron Hayden, A. M.
Nicholson, James C.
Norton, Alice P., Mrs., A. M.
Norton, William B., A. M., Ph. D.
Notman, William Robson, Rev.,
D. D.
Gates, James F.
Osborne, Naboth, Rev., A. M.
Owen, William Bishop, Ph. D.
Page, Herman, Rev.
Page, Mary B., Mrs.
Palm, Charles, Rev.
Parker, Alonzo K., Rev., D. D.
Parker, C. M.
Parker, William J.
Parkhurst, Matthew M., Rev., D.D.
Parks, Edward L., D. D.
Patten, Amos W., D. D.
500
THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Patten, Henry J., Ph. B.
Perkins, J. G.
Pike, Granville Ross, Rev., A. M.
Porter, Ora H., Mrs.
Pruen, J. W., Rev.
Rhodes, Helen, Mrs.
Rice, T. F.
Robertson, Ina Law
Robinson, George L., Ph. D.
Robinson, Willard H., Rev.
Robbins, M. C.
Roe, Charles M.
Rogers, Euclid B., Rev., D. D.
Rosenquist, Eric J. A., Rev.
RuNYAN, Walter Leroy
Savage, G. L. F., Rev., D. D.
Scheible, Albert
Scott, John W.
Scott, Robert S., Mrs.
Scott, Walter D., Ph. D.
Scoville, Charles R., Rev., A. M.,
LL. D.
Selden, F. H.
Sharman, Henry Burton
Sheets, Frank D., Rev.
Sherer, Samuel J.
Sherer, William G.
Sherman, Edwin T.
Sherman, Franklyn Cole, Rev.
*SissoN, Edward O., Ph. D.
Sloane, Joseph Curtis
Small, Albion W., Ph. D., LL. D.
Smith, Gerald Birney
Smith, James R., Rev.
Smith, John M. P., Ph. D.
SoARES, Theodore G., Ph. D., D. D.
Staekey, L. V.
Staudt, Calvin K., A. M.
Stearns, Wallace Nelson, Ph. D.
Stevenson, Andrew
Stewart, Charles S.
Stirling, William Robert
Stockwell, John W., Jr., Rev.
Strain, Horace L., Rev.
Strong, Sidney, Rev., D. D.
Stuart, Charles M., A. M., D. D.
SWERTFAGER, GeORGE A., ReV.
Sylvester, Clare, B. B.
Taft, Lorado
Taylor, Alva W., Rev.
Taylor, Graham, D. D.
Tenney, William Lawrence, Rev
Thoman, Leroy Delano
Thomas, D. F., Rev., A. M.
Thompson, M. A.
Thorp, Willard B., Rev.
Tompkins, Arnold, A. M., Ph. D.
Tompkins, DeLoss M., Rev., A. M.,
D. D.
TuLLER, Edward P., Rev.
Turner, George H.
VanArsdall, Geo. B., Rev., A. M.
Van Inwegen, Mary B., Mrs.
Vance, Joseph A., Rev., D. D.
fViNCENT, George E., Ph. D.
VosE, Frederic Perry
*tVoTAW, Clyde Weber, Ph. D.
VoTAW, Elihu H., Mrs.
Wacker, Charles H.
Walcott, Gregory Dexter
Ward, Harry F., Rev.
Wells, F. A.
Wheeler, Arthur Dana, A. M.
Wheelock, H. B.
Wickes, William R.
Wilder, William H., A. M., D. D.
Wiley, S. Wert
*tWiLLETT, Herbert L. Ph D .
Williams, Alice L., Mrs.
Wilson, C. J., Rev.
Wilson, Lucy L.
Winchester, Benjamin S., Rev.
Witter, Marcus A., Rev.
*WooD, Walter M.
Wyant, a. R. E., Rev., Ph. D.
Young, Charles A., Rev.
Zeller, J. C, B. A., B. D.
Zenos, Andrew C, Rev., D. D.
institutions
American Institute of Sacred
Literature
Centenary Methodist Episcopal
Sunday School
Chicago Theological Seminary
EvANSTON Free Public Library
John Crerar Library
Lake Forest College
Men's Normal Bible Class of the
Young Men's Christian Association
Northwestern College
Northwestern University
Peoria Public Library
University of Chicago
Wither's Public Library
IDAHO
CowDEN, John G., Rev.
INDIAN TERRITORY
Howard, George P., Rev.
THE MEMBERS OF THE ASSOCIATION
501
INDIANA
Blunt, Harry, Rev.
Bryan, William L., Ph. D.
Carpenter, George C, Rev.
Carr, John W., A. M.
Coleman, Christopher B.
Cross, William Reid, Rev.
Darby, W. J., Rev.
ElKENBERRV, DaVID F., ReV., Ph. B.
Farr, Morton A., Rev., A. M.
Feuerlicht, Morris M., Rabbi
Francis, Arthur J., Rev.
Garrison, Winfred Ernest, Rev.
GoBiN, Hillary A., Rev., D.D. LL.D
Haines, Matthias L., Rev., D. D.
Halpenny, E. Wesley, Rev., S. T. L.
Hanson, A. W.
Hill, Harry Granison, Rev., A. M.
HO.AGLAND, DeSCOM D., ReV., S.T.B.
Horstman, J. G., Rev.
Hughes, Edwin H., S. T. D.
Jones, William H.
Kane, William P., D. D.
Kelly, Robert Lincoln, Ph. M.
Lyons, S. R., Rev., D. D.
McKenzie, John Heywakd, Rev.,
A. M., Ph. D.
Mott, Thomas Abbott, A. M.
Nicholson, Mary E.
Pearcy, James B.
Philputt, Allan B., Rev., D. D.
Rice, Perry James, Rev.
Russell, Elbert, A. M.
Semelroth, Wm. J.
Smith, Ernest Dailey, Rev., S.T.B.
Stansfield, Joshua, Rev., D. D.
Starbuck, Edwin D., Ph. D.
TxNSLEY, Charles William, Rev.
Tippy, Worth M., Rev.
Ullrick, Delbert Sylvester, Rev.
VoKNHOLT, E., Rev.
Wiles, Ernest P., A. M.
Wylie, Wm. H., Rev., A. M., B. D.
institutions
Earlham College
Indiana University, Bloomington
Public Library, South Bend
Valparaiso College
IOWA
Bell, Hill M., A. M.
Bradley, Daniel F., D. D.
Breed, Reuben L., Rev.
Brett, Arthur W., Mrs.
Cady, George L.
Cessna, Orange H.
Day, Ernest E., Rev.
Empey, F. D., Rev.
Fairbanks, Arthur, Rev., Ph. D.
Frizzell, John W., Rev., Ph. D.
Haggard, Alfred M., A. M.
H.^NDY, Elias, a. B., a. M.
Hodgdon, Frank W., Rev.
Johnstone, N. W.
King, William F., D. D., LL. D.
MacLean, George E., Ph.D., LL. D.
Marsh, Robert L., Rev.
Moore, W. Howard, Rev.
Olmstead, Margaret Titus, Rev.
OSBORN, LORAN D., ReV., Ph. D.
Osgood, Robert Storrs, Rev.
Paddock, George E., Rev.
Pearson, William L., Ph. D.
PiEESEL, Alba C, A. M.
Robinson, Emma A.
Severn, Hermon H.
Sinclair, R. B.
Smith, Otterbein O., Rev.
Stoops, J. Dashill, Rev., Ph. D.
Taylor, Glen A., Rev.
Thoren, Herman H., Ph. D.
Waite, Oren B., Rev.
Wight, Ambrose S., Rev.
institutions
Cornell College
Drake University
KANSAS
Bayles, J. W., Rev.
Bolt, Wm. W., Rev.
Cakruth, William H., Ph. D.
CoNOLLY, Charles Parker, Rev.
Frantz, Edward, A. M.
Ingham, J. E., Rev.
Miller, John C, Rev., A. M., D. D.
MuRLiN, Lemuel H., Rev., S. T. D.
Nicholson, George E.
Payne, Wallace C.
Price, Maude
Price, Silas Eber, Rev.
ScRUTON, Charles A. '
Springston, Jenkins, Ph. D
Strong, Frank, Ph. D.
Strong, Frank P., Rev.
Wakefield, George C.
Wilcox, Alexander M., Ph. D.
Wilkinson, Jasper Newton
institutions
Baker University
University of Kansas
502
THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
KENTUCKY
Armstrong, Cecil J., Rev.
Dickens, J. L., Ph. D., D. D., LL. D.
Enelow, H. G., D. D.
Frost, William Goodell, D. D.
Hampton, W. J.
Hill, -Albert S., Ph. D.
HuBBELL, George A., Ph. D.
Jenkins, Burris A., A. M., D. D.
Maclachlan, H. D. C, Rev., A. M.
Montague, H. E.
MuLLiNS, Edgar Young, D. D., LL.D.
Ramsay, W. H., Rev.
RosEVEAR, Henry E.
Waddill, C. J.
FooTE, Henry W., Rev.
Kent, John B., Rev.
Miller, Walter
Newhall, Alfred A., A. M.
Perkins, R. W., D. D.
LOUISIANA
Vaughan, Robert W., Rev.
institutions
Tulane University Library
MAINE
Anthony, Alfred W., D. D.
Briggs, James Franklin
Chapman, Henry Leland, D. D.
CoAR, A. H., Rev
Cochrane, J. E., Rev.
Colby, George C, Rev., D. D.,
LL. D.
Cutler, Charles Herrick, Rev.
DeGarmo, E. a., Mrs.
Denio, Francis B., Rev., D. D.
Frost, Robert D., Rev., A. M.
Fulton, Albert C, Rev.
Garcelon, Frances, Miss
Gardiner, Robert H., A. B.
Gates, Carl Martel, Rev.
Hamilton, Henry H., Rev., A. B.,
LL.D.
Harrington, Karl Pomeroy, A. M.
Hayes, Benjamin Francis, D. D.
Howe, James Albert, D. D.
Hulbert, Henry Woodward, M. A.,
D. D.
Hyde, William DeWitt, D. D. LL. D.
Johnson, Franklin W., A. M.
Jump, Herbert A., Rev.
Krumreig, E. L., Rev., A. M.
Lincoln, Howard A., Rev.
Marsh, Edward L., Rev.
Mason, Edward A.
McCurdy, Chas. H.
Metcalf, L. H., Rev.
Moulton, Warren Joseph, Ph. D.
Ogier, Walter W., Rev.
Perkins, John C, Rev.
Peterson, Oscar W., Rev.
PuRiNTON, Herbert R., Prof., A.M.
Ropes, C. J. H., D. D.
SiMMONDS, N. M., Rev., B. A.
Snow, B. P., Rev., A. M.
institutions
The University of Maine
MARYLAND
Apple, Joseph H., A. M.
Baldwin, J. Mark, Ph. D., LL. D.
Brosnahan, Timothy, Rev.
Dodd, Charles Hastings, Rev.
Ellicott, Elizabeth K.
Goucher, John F., Rev.
HoBSON, A. A., Rev., Ph. D.
King, Aubrey E., Mrs.
Ranck, Clayton H., Rev.
Smith, R. Lynes
Springer, Ruter W., Rev.
VanMeter, J. B.
VanSickle, James H., A. M.
institutions
Enoch Pratt Free Library
John Hopkins University
MASSACHUSETTS
Abercrombie, D. W., LL. D.
Adams, Frederick C.
Allen, Henry Mott, B. A.
Allen, Pliny A., Jr., Rev., B. D.
THE MEMBERS OF THE ASSOCIATION
503
Ames, Charles Gordon
Andrews, Ellen
Antrim, Eugene M., Rev.
Arnold, George F.
Babcock, Arthur Dwight
Bailey, Adelaide P., Mrs.
Bailey, Dudley P.
Bailey, Albert E.
Bailey, Henry Txjrner
Balch, Elizabeth A.
Baldwin, William A.
Ballantine, William G., D. D.,
LL. D.
Barber, Elliott B., Rev.
Barker Herbert A.
*Barnes, Lemuel C, Rev., D. D.
Barnes, L. Call, Mrs.
Barry, Corinna
Barton, James L., Rev., D. D.
Bassett, Austin B., Rev.
Bates, Walter C.
Batt, William J., Rev.
Bean, Abram L., Rev.
♦Beatley, Clara Bancroft, Mrs.
Beebe, Frank
Belknap, Arthur T., A. B., A. M.,
B. D.
Berry, William Frederic
Biggs, S. R. H., D. B.
Bissell, Flint M., Rev.
Blackburn, Alex., Rev., D. D.
tBL.'VKESLEE, ErASTUS, ReV.
Blanchard, Henry, Rev., D. D.
BooKW alter, Alfred Guitner, B. A.,
M. A.
Borden, Ariadne J.
Borden, Anna H.
BowNE, Borden P., Ph. D., LL. D.
Brackett, Elliott G., Mrs.
Bradford, Emery L., Rev.
Bradley, Edward E., Rev.
Braithwaite, E. Ernest, A. M.
Ph. D.
Branch, Ernest William
*Brand, Charles A., Rev.
Breyfogle, Caroline M., A. B.
Bridgman, Howard A., Rev.
Brown, Marian K.
BuMSTEAD, Arthur, Ph. D.
*BuRR, Everett D., Rev., D. D.
Bushnell, Samuel C, Rev.
Butler, Ernest S.
Butler, Frank E., Rev.
Campbell, Andrew, Rev.
Capen, Edward W., Mrs.
Capen, Samuel B., A. M., LL. D.
Carter, Charles F., Rev.
Carter, John F., Rev.
Carter, Mrs. H. H.
Carter, Richard B.
Gary, Seth C., Rev.
Chalmers, Andrew B., Rev.
Chamberlain, George D.
Chandler, Edward H., Rev.
Chew, Thomas
Clarke, Lillian Freeman
Coburn, Charles A., Ph. B.
Cole, Thomas L., Rev.
Con ant, Hamilton S.
Conner, Ralph Everett, Rev., B.D.
Cooper, Knowles William
Covell, Arthur J., Rev., A .M., B. D.
Craig, Helen M., Mrs.
Crothers, Samuel M., D. D.
CuMMiNGS, Edward, Rev.
Gushing, Grafton Dulany, A. M.,
LL. B.
Dale, Mrs. Eben
Davis, Albert P., Rev.
Davis, Gilbert G.
Davis, William V. W., Rev., D. D.
*Day, Charles O., D. D.
Dick, Samuel M., A. M., Ph. D.
Dike, Samuel W., Rev., LL. D.
Dingwell, James, Rev.
DiNGWELL, James D., Rev.
Dixon, Joseph L.
DoGGETT, L. L., Ph. D.
Donovan, Winfred Nichols
Douglass, R. S.
Dumm, B. Alfred, Rev., Ph. D.
Dunning, Albert E., D. D.
Dyer, Almon J., Rev.
Eager, Harriet A., Mrs.
Earnshaw, Albert F., Rev.
Ekins, Grove Frederic, A. B., B. D.
Eldredge, Ernest Wilton, Rev.
Eliot, Christopher R., Rev.
Eliot, Samuel A., Rev., D. D.
Endicott, Eugene F., LL. D.
Evans, Daniel, Rev.
Everett, Eugene E., Mrs.
Farwell, Parvis Thaxter, Rev.
Faucon, Catherine W.
Fearey, Thomas H., A. M.
Fielden, Joseph F., Rev.
Fisher, Angie B., Mrs.
Fisher, Galen M., B. L.
Fletcher, William L, A. M.,
Flint, George H., Rev., A. M.
FooTE, Arthur
Foster, Augustine N., Rev.
Fuller, George W., Rev.
Gardner, Frederick M., Rev.
Gates, Owen H., Rev., Ph. D.
Genung, John F., Rev., Ph. D.
Gibson, H. W.
Gilbert, George H., Rev., Ph. D.,
D. D.
Gilman, Bradley, Rev.
Goodrich, Lincoln B., Rev.
Goodyear, DeMont, S. T. B., Ph.D.
504
THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Gordon, William Clark, A. M.,
Ph.D.
Gow, John Russell, Rev.
Gray, Ira E., Miss
Green, Charles A.
Green, George F., Rev.
Gregg, James Edgar, Rev., A. M.,
B. D.
Greul, Frederick B., D. D.
Guild, Fanny Carlton
Guss, Roland W., A. M.
Haggerty, William Armstead, A.M.,
S. T. B.
Hale, Edward E., Rev., D. D. LL. D.
Hale, George H.
Hall, Edwin Buckner
*Hall, G. Stanley, Ph. D., LL. D.
Hall, Newton M., Rev.
Hardy, Edwin Noah, Rev.
Harrington, Charles Edward, Rev.,
D. D.
Harris, George, D. D., LL. D.
Hartshorn, W. N.
Harvey, Chas. Woodruff, A. M.
Haslett, Samuel B., Ph. D.
Hathaway, Edward S.
Hazard, Caroline, A. M., Litt. D.
Hazard, M. C, Ph. D.
Hay, H. Clinton, Rev., A. B.
Heath, Daniel C, A. M.
Hervey, Henry D., A. M.
Hersey, Harry Adams, A. B.
Hill, Don Gleason, LL. B., A. M.
Hiller, Charles C. P., Rev., S.T.B.
*HiTCHC0CK, Albert W., A. M.
Holmes, Alice M., Miss, B. D.
Hopkins, Henry M., D. D., LL. D.
HoRNE, I. W., Prof.
Horner, Thomas Jay, Rev.
HoRR, George E., Rev., D. D.
Howard, Ethel L.
Howard, Thomas D., Rev.
Howe, Chester H., A. B., B. D.
HoYT, Henry N., Rev, D. D.
HuLiNG, Ray Greene., A. M., Sc.
D.
Humphrey, Richard C.
Huntington, C. W., Rev., D. D.
Hyde, Henry K.
James, D. Melancthon, Rev.
Johnson, Alice, Miss
Johnson, Arthur S.
Keedy, John L., Rev.
Kendall, Edward
Kendrick, Eliza H.,Ph. D.
Kenngott, George F., Rev., A. M.
KiLBON, John Luther, Rev.
Kimball, Frank W., A. B.
Kirsch, Natalie
Knight, Joseph King, D. D. S.
Knowles, Richard, Rev., Ph. D.
Lauderbaum, Frederic Curtiss
*Lawrence, William, Rt. Rev., D. D.,
S. T. D.
Lee, Samuel H. Rev., A. M.
Lefavour, Henry, Ph. D., LL. D.
Leonard, Mary Hall
Lincoln, Howard A.
Litchfield, William E.
Little, Arthur, Rev., D. D.
Locke, Adelaide L, A. B., S. T. B
Logan, John W.
Loomis, Samuel Lane, Rev., D. D.
Lovett, Elizabeth R., Mrs.,
Lowell, D. O. S., A. M., M. D.
*Macfarland, Charles S., Rev.
Ph. D.
Mason, D. Charles F., A. B.
Matthews, John H., Rev.
McKeag, Anna Jane, Ph. D.
Means, Frederick H., Rev.
Mehaffey. George W.
Merriam, Edmund F., Rev., D. D.
Merrick, Frank W., Rev., Ph. D.
Merrill, Charles C, Rev.
Merrill, Geo. Plumer
Merrill, Helen A., A. M., Ph. D.
Merriman, Daniel, Rev., D. D.
Mieir, Charles F.
Millar, Morgan A. B.
Mills, Carlton Putnam, Rev.
Milton, Lucy A., B. D.
Mitchell, Hinckley G., Ph. D.
S. T. D.
Moll, Edward
Moore, Caroline Sheldon, A. B.
Moore, Edward C, D. D.
Morse. Mrs. Samuel T.
MosHER. George F., LL. D.
Moulton, J. Sidney
MowRY, William A., Ph. D.
MoxoM, Philip S., Rev , D. D.
Nash, C. Ellwood, A. M., D. D.
Nash, Henry Sylvester, D. D.
Neilson Nellie, Ph. D.
Norton, Stephen A., Rev., D. D.
NoYES, Charles L., Rev.
NoYES. Edward M., Rev.
tNoYES, Henry D.
Packard, Annie E.
Paine, George Lyman, M. A., B. D.
Paine, Robert Treat, Jr.
Parker, Frederic, C. W.
Parkhurst, Mary A.
Peabody, Endicott, Rev., D. D.
Peabody, Francis G., D. D.
*Peloubet, Francis N., Rev., D.D.
Percival, Charles H., Rev.
Perrin, Willard T., Rev.
Phelps, Lawrence, Rev.
Pinkham, George R., A. M.
Place, Charles A.
Potter, Ernest T., Rev.
Power, Charles W.
THE MEMBERS OF THE ASSOCIATION
50s
•i=Pkay, J. S.
Prescott, Josephine, F., Miss
Prince, John Tilden, Ph. D.
Prudden, Theodore P.
Redfield, Isabella T.
Reed, David Allen
Reed, Henry B.
Remington, Clinton V. S.
Rhoades, Winfred C, Rev.
Rice, Charles F., Rev., D.D.
Rice, Walter, Rev.
Rich, William Thayer, Rev.
Richardson, Cyrus N.
Richardson, Edward A.
Roberts, Albert E.
Roberts, W. Dewee
RoBSON, Frank Huson, A. M.
Rogers, Dwight Leete
Rollins, Elizabeth, Miss
Rollins, W. H., Rev.
Ropes, James Hardy
Ropes, William Ladd, Rev., A. M.
Rowley, Francis H., D. D
Rudd, Edward H., B. D., A. M.
Sanders, Frank Knight, D. D., Ph.D
Savage, William B.
Scott, Charles S., Rev., A. B.
Scoville, Augustus E., Rev.
Secrist, Henry T., Rev.
Seelye, L. Clark, D. D., LL. D.
Sew all, John L., Rev.
Sewall, Jotham B., a. M,. D. D.
Shaw, James A., Rev.
*tSHAW, William
Shipman, Frank R., Rev.
Shipman, William R.
Shultis, Newton
Shumway, Franklin P.
Sims, Thomas, Rev., D.D.
Sleeper, H. D.
Sleeper, W. W., Rev.
Small, Augustus D.
Smith, Albert D., Rev.
Smith, Henry Goodwin, Rev., D. D.
Smith, Henry Preserved, Rev., D. D.
Snow, Walter B.
Snyder, William H.
Spaulding, Henry G., Rev.
Springer, George H.
Stackpole, Markham W.. Rev.
Stebbins, Flora Violet
Steele, Miss Adoline M.
Stevens, Charles E., A. M.
Stone, Ellen M., Miss
Sutton, Edwin O.
Swain, Edith L., A. B.
Swan, Mrs. Joshua A.
Swett, Vernon B.
Taylor, Edward M., Rev., D. D.
Tewksbury, Geo. A., Rev.
Thayer, Herbert E., Rev., A. B.
Thayer, William Greenough, Rev,
Thomas, Reuen, Rev., Ph. D., D. D.
Thurber, Charles H., Ph. D.
TiLTON, George H., Rev.
Tower, Wm. Hogarth, Rev.
Turk, Morris H., Rev., Ph. D.
Vandemark, Wilson E., Rev.
Varley, Arthur, Rev.
Verbeck, Ida S., Mrs.
Vinton, Alexander H., Rt. Rev.
Vogt, VonOgden
Voorhees, J. Spencer, Rev., A. M.
Waldron, Daniel W., Rev., A. S.,
A. M.
Ward, W. D.
Ware, Louie Erville
Waterhouse, F. a., Mrs.
Weed, Geo. M., A. B.
Wells, Amos R.
Wendte, Charles W., Rev.
Weston, Sidney Adams, Ph.D.
Wheeler, Carleton Ames
Wheeler, E. C, Rev.
Wheelock, Katrine
*Wheelock, Lucy
White, Mabel A. R., Mrs.
Whittemore, William F.
Wilder, Herbert A.
Wilkens, G. H., Mrs.
WiLLARD, Horace M., Sc. D.
Williams, Annie G.
Williams, Appleton P.
Williamson, James S., Rev.
WiNKLEY, Samuel H., Rev.
WiNSHip, A. E., Ph. D.
Wood, Irving F., Ph. D.
Wood, W. A., Rev., A. M., S. T. B.
Woodbridge, Richard G., Rev.
WooDROW, Samuel H., Rev.
WooLLEY, Mary E., Litt. D.
Wright, Theodore F., Ph. D.
Wriston, Henry L., Rev.
York, Burt Leon, Rev., M. A.
Ziegler, Charles L.
institutions
Boston University, School of The-
ology
Bradford Academy
Congregational Sunday School
Superintendents' Union of Bos-
ton AND Vicinity
Divinity School of Harvard Uni-
versity
Episcopal Theological School
Fall River District Sunday School
Association
General Theological Library, The
Harvard College Library
PIarvard University Divinity
School
MiLLiCENT Library, The
Mount Holyoke College
So6
THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
South Congregational Sunday
School
South Congregational Young Peo-
ple's Society of Christian En-
deavor
State Normal School
Universalist Sunday School or
Our Father
Wellesley College
MICHIGAN
Alexander, A. O., Rev.
Angell, James B., LL. D.
Barr, Alfred H., Rev.
Beardslee, John W., A. M., D. D.
Beman, Wooster Woodruff, A. M.
Bishop, J. Remsen, B. A.
Bliss, Frederick Leroy
BoYNTON, Nehemiah, Rev., D. D.
BUELL, L. E.
BuRTT, Benjamin H., Rev.
Carter, Ferdinand E., Rev.
Coleman, Horace E., B. S.
CoLER, George P.
Collin, Henry P., Rev., A. M.
Daniels, Eva J.
Dascomb, H. N., Rev.
Day, Alfred
Deforest, Heman P., Rev., D. D.
Elliott, George, Rev., D. D.
Ewing, William, Rev.
FiNSTER, Clarence, Rev.
Fischer, William J.
Foster, Edward D.
Gelston, Joseph Mills, Rev.
Gray, Clifton D., Rev., Ph. D
Hadden, Archibald, Rev., D. D.
Hammond, Frank E.
Harris, Hugh Henry, Rev., B. A.
Herrick, Jullien a.. Rev., Ph. D.
Hicks, Henhy W., Rev.
Hoben, T. Allan, Rev.
HuTCHiNS, A. J., Rev.
Lake, E. M., Rev.
Lancaster, Elsworth Gage
Logan, Wellington McMurtey
MacGurn, Georgian Olive, B. E.
Mauck, Joseph W., A. M., LL. D.
McCollester, Lee S., Rev., D. D.
McDermand, B., Rev.
McDowell, Jno., Rev.
McLaughlin, Robert W., Rev., D. D.
Meeser, Spenser B., Rev., D. D.
Morris, Isaiah S., M. D.
Morris, S. T., Rev.
Neill, Henry, Rev., A. M.
Ott, John William, Rev., B. D.
Patchell, Chas. T., Rev.
Perry, Ernest B., M. E.
Puffer, William Martin, A. M., D.D.
Randall, J. Herman, Rev.
Rogers, Joseph M., Rev.
Searle, Frederick E.
Severence, Lemuel, Rev.
Stowell, C. B.
Stowell, Myron C.
Sutherland, John W., Rev. D. D.
Sweet, Franklin W., Rev.
VanKirk, Robert W., Rev.
Vinton, G. Jay
Wallin, V. A.
tWARREN, Edward K.
Warren, Leroy, A. M., D. D.
Warriner, Eugene C.
Waterman, Leroy, A. B., B. D.
Wenley, Robert M., Sc. D., Ph. D.,
LL.D.
Wheeler, Clara
Wilson, William John, Rev., S. T. D.
Wright, W. K., Rev.
institutions
Albion College, Department of the
English Bible
Grand Rapids Public Library, The
Public Library, The Detroit
State Normal College
MINNESOTA
Beard, Harrington
Boynton, Richard W., Rev.
Clarke, Mrs. Anna Y.
Crandall, Lathan a., Rev., D. D.
Fowler, Arthur Thomas, Rev., D.D.
Gilchrist, Neil A., Rev.
Hallock, Leavitt H., Rev., D. D.
Harrington, CM.
Heermance, Edgar L., Rev., A. M.
Holmes, L. P., Rev.
Innis, Geo. S., Ph. D., D. D
Lyman, Frederick W.
Martin, Charles J.
Mathie, Karl M.
Merrill, George R., D. D
Norton, William Wellington
Pope, Edward R., Rev.
Pressey, Edwin S., Rev.
Prucha, Vaclav, Rev.
Robbins, Mrs. D R.
Rollins, G. S., Rev.
Sallmon, William H., A. M.
THE MEMBERS OF THE ASSOCIATION
507
Scott, L. G
Scott, Mrs. L. G.
Shepard, Elgin R.
Smith, Charles Alden, A. M.
Smith, Samuel G., D. D., LL. D.
Strong, James W., D. D.
Sutherland, J. B.
Thomas, Percy, Rev.
Waller, W. C. A., Rev.
White, Ada E.
White, Frederick
Young, Ernest W., LL. M.
institutions
Plymouth Congregational Sunday
School, Minneapolis
MISSISSIPPI
Brown, J. W. H., Rev.
Dickens, J. L., Ph. D., LL. D., D. D.
Foster, Mrs. William W., Jr.
Fulton, Robert B., A. M., LL.D.
Hunter, John D., Rev.
Owen, Samuel H. C, A. M.
Stamps, C. T., Rev., D. D.
Sydenstricker, Hiram M., Rev.,
A. M., Ph. D.
MISSOURI
Aldrich, Alice M.
Allen, L. L.
Baird, W. T.
Bernard, Taylor, Rev.
*Bitting, Wm. C, Rev., D. D
Bolt, William W., Rev.
BuLLARD, Herny N., Rev., Ph. D.
Bushnell, Albert, Rev., D. D.
Darby, William L.a.mbert, Rev.
Duckworth, E., Rev.
dunlop, j. d.
FiFiELD, J. W., Rev., A. M., D. D.
Garrison, James H., LL. D.
GooDSON, C. Polk, Rev.
Hays, Wm. B., Rev.
Hicks, W. C, Rev.
Hoover, Oliver P., Rev., B. A., M. A.
HowLAND, Clark P., A. M.
Jesse, Richard H., LL. D.
Jones, William M., Rev., Ph. D.
Keppel, Charles H.
King, George W., Rev.
Knox, George P.
Kroeger, Ernest R.
Lhamon, W. J., A. M.
McKittrick, William J., Rev., D. D.
Moore, W. T., Mrs.
Morris, James C.
MucKLEY, G. W., Rev.
Newell, William H.j Rev.
NOYES, G. C.
O'Brien, James P., Rev.
Patton, Cornelius H., Rev., D. D.
Phillips, Alice M. M.
Porter, J. J., Rev., D. D.
Roblee, Mrs. Joseph H.
ScARRiTT, Charles W., Rev.
Semelroth, William J.
Shaw, Edwin S., Rev.
Sheldon, Walter L.
Short, William, Rev., D. D.
Short, Wallace M., Rev.
Smith, Faith Edith
Smith, Madison R.
Smith, William, Re\'.
Spencer, Claudius B., Rev., D. D.
Stevenson, James S.
Stewart, Alphonzo Chase, LL. D.
Stimson, Cyrus Flint, Rev.
Stone, R. Foster, Rev.
Sullivan, J. W., Rev.
Swift, George Hiram, A. M., Rev.
Verdier, a. R.
wieffenbach, eugene, a. m., s. t. b
Williams, Walter, Hon.
Wyckoff, Clyde H., Rev.
Young, Mattie T.
institutions
University of Missouri
MONTANA
Bell, W. S., Rev.
Conway, Geo. B.
Fuller, Willard, Rev.
institutions
First Baptist Bible School, Dillon
5o8
THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
NEBRASKA
AxTELL, Archie G., Rev.
Batten, Samuel Zane, Rev., A. M.
Brinstad, Charles William, Rev.,
A.M.
Bullock, Motier A., R.ev., D. D.
BURHNAM, S. H
Crawford, J. Forsyth, Rev., A. M.
Creighton, John, Rev.
Elliott, Walter Lindley, Rev.
Hammel, John D , Rev.
Millard, Martin J., Rev.
Tuttle, John Ellery, Rev., D. D.
Bailey, Arthur W., Rev.
Ball, Dwight A., B. D.
Bellows, Rev. Russell N.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
Bingham, G. W., A. M.
BiSBEE, Martin Davis, B. U., A. B.
Blake, Henry A., Rev.
Braisted, William E., Rev.
Dana, S. H., Rev., D. D.
Emerson, Charles F.
Gale, Tyler E.
GuLiCK, Edward L., Rev.
HoRNE, Herman H., Ph. D.
Huntington, George P., Rev.
Merriam, Charles L., Rev., B. A.
Morrison, Henry C, A. B.
QuiMBY, S. E., Rev.
Reed, George Harlon, Rev.
Richardson, Cynes, Rev., D. D
Sanderson, E. Dwight, B. S.
ScRiBNER, J. Woodbury, Rev.
Smith, N. W. P., Rev.
Swain, Richard L., Rev., Ph. D.
Thayer, Lucius H., Rev.
Thorne, John Greene
ToRREY, C. C, Rev., A. M.
Waterman, Lucius, M. A., D. D.
Yager, Granville, Rev.
Tucker, William J., D. D., LL. D.
Warren, William F., Rev.
NEW JERSEY
Baldwin, Josephine L.
Barnes, Mrs. J. Woodbridge
Beesley, B. W.
BoococK, William H., Rev.
Bradford, Amory H., Rev., D. D.
Brett, Cornelius, Rev., D. D.
Cole, Arthur S., Rev.
Converse, C. Crozat, LLD.
Dennis, Mrs. Laban
Donaldson, George, Rev., Ph.D.
Dulles, William, Jr., A.M., LL. B.
Fennell, W. G., Rev.
Fergusson, E. Morris, Rev., A. M.
Garrett, Edmund F., Rev.
Hawkins, L. E.
Hearne, Edward Warren, A. M.
Hepburn, W. M., M. D.
Hoppaugh, William, Rev.
Howard, John Raymond, A. B., A. M.
*Hurlbut, Jesse L., Rev., D. D.
HuTTON, Mancius Holmes, Rev., D.D.
Johnston Henry J., Rev.
Jones, Mrs. Hiram T.
Kern, Herman
KuMP, William A., Rev.
Lathrop, Miss A. C.
Leedom, Ira C, M. D.
Lewis, A. H., D. D.., LL. D.
Matteson, William B., Rev., A. M.
McPherson, Simon J., Rev., D. D.
Melendy, Royal L.
Meyer, Hugo, Rev.
Miller, Emily Huntington, Mrs.
Morgan, Minot C. Rev.
Murray, George Wellwood
Myers, Elmer H., Rev.
Norris, Ada L.
Patterson, M. T., Pd. M.
Paxton, Elizabeth D.
Pettit, Mrs. Alonzo
Peters, Nanna Heath
Pratt, John R., Rev.
Reed, Isaac N., Mrs.
Robinson, Ida S.
Roop, Marcus J.
Sailer, T. H. P., Ph. D.
Schenck, F. S.
Seeley, Levi, Ph. D.
Stafford, Daniel Newton, Ph. D.,
D. D.
Sweeney, Algernon T.
Thomas, Marion
Tucker, Hoyt Henderson
VanDyke, Henry, D. D., LL.D.
Weeks, John W.
Wharton, Charles A.
White, Grace D.
Wilson, Ferdinand S., Rev., A. M.
Wishart, Alfred W., Rev.
institutions
New Church Educational Associa-
tion
THE MEMBERS OF THE ASSOCIATION
509
NEVADA
Friend, W. A.
NEW YORK
Abbott, Ernest H.
Abbott, Lyman, Rev., D. D., LL. D.
Adams, John Quincy, Rev.
Alexander, J. Vincent
Alling, Joseph T.
Anderson, Thomas D., Rev., D. D.
Anderson, William F., Rev., A. M.,
D. D.
Armstrong E. P. Rev.
Armstrong, Lynn P. Rev.
Atterbury, Anson P., Rev., D. D.
Atwood, Isaac M., Rev., D. D.
Ayers, Daniel Hollister
Ayers, Sabra Grant
Bagnallo, Powhawton, Rev.
Baker, Smith, M. D.
Baldwin, Edward Colfax
Ball, Archey Decatur, Rev.
Ball, Elizabeth M.
Ball, John Chester, Rev.
Ball, John Oscar
Barker, Henry, Rev.
BartOj Charles E., Rev.
Batten, L. W., Rev., Ph. D.
Benjamin, Chase
Berry, George R., Ph. D.
Betteridge, Walter R.
Betts, F. W., Rev.
Bewer, Julius A., Ph. D.
BiRNiE, Douglas Putnam, Rev.
Bishop, Mrs. L. J. P.
Bliss, Alfred V., Rev.
BoviLLE, R. G., Rev., A. M.
Briggs, George A., Rev.
Brooks, John L., A. M.
Brown, FranciS; Ph. D., D. D.
Brown, Marianna C, Ph. D.
Brown, William Adams, Ph. D., D. D.
Brush, Alfred H., Rev., D. D.
Buck, Gertrude Ph. D.
Buckelew, Sarah F.
Burnham, Edmund, Rev., A. B., B. D.,
A. M.
Burnham, Sylvester, D. D.
Burns, Allen Tibbals
Burrell, Joseph Dunn, Rev.
Butler, Nicholas Murray, Ph.D
LL. D.
Buttrick, Wallace, Rev. D. D.
Cady, J. Cleveland
Campbell, John, Rev.
Canfield, James H., LL. D
Carl, William C.
Case, Carl D., Rev., Ph. D.
Chapman, William H., Rev.
Chase, Wm. Sheefe, Rev.
Collins, Hannah
Conant, Osmyn p.
Conant, Thomas. LL. D.
CoNKLiN, John W., Rev.
Cook, John W.
Cooper, J. W., Rev., D. D.
Cox, Sydney Herbert, Rev.
Cutten, George B., Rev.
Dame, Nelson Page, Rev.
Davey, J. J.
Davis, Boothe C, Rev.,Ph. D.,D.D.
Davies, M. J., A. B.
Dickson, Henry D.
Dietrich, C. W.
Dodge, D. Stuart
Dodge, Grace H.
Dodge, Richard Despard
Duncan, W. A. Rev., Ph. D.
Dutton, Samuel T.
Edwards, John H., Rev., D. D.
Elliott, Mr.
Elliott, A. J.
Fagnani, Charles P., Rev., D. D
Fairchild, Edwin M., Rev.
Farnsworth, Charles H.
Ferris, Frank A.
Fitts, Alice E.
Forbes, George M., A. M.
Forbes, John F., A. M., Ph. D.
Forbush, William B., Rev., Ph. D.
Fox, Norman
Frame, James E.
Francis, Lewis, Rev., D. D.
French, H. Delmar, A. M., Litt. D.
Fritts, Harry Burnett, Rev.
Gannett, William Channing, Rev.
Gelert, Johannes S.
German, Frank F., Rev.
Gifford, O. p.. Rev., D. D.
Goodman, Fred S.
GouLDY, Jenny A.
Gow, George C, Mus. D.
Grant, W. Henry
Griffis, William Elliot, Rev., D. D.,
L. H. D.
GuLicK, Luther H., M. D.
Gurley, Mrs. Sears E.
t*HALL, Charles Cuthbert, D. D.
Hall, Colby Dixon, Rev.
Hall, Thomas C, Rev., D. D.
Hall, William W.
Hammond, Halsey
Hanson, Arthur T., Rev.
*Harrower, Pascal, Rev., A.M.
5IO
THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Hassold, F. a., Rev.
Haughton, B. F.
Haven, William ingraham, Rev.,D.D
Henshaw, Gordon E., Rev.
Hervey, Walter L., Ph. D.
HiCKMAN.iWiLLiAM H., Rev., A.M., D.D.
Hicks, William Cleveland, Rev.,
A. M.
Hill, William Bancroft, Rev.
Hillis, Newell D wight. Rev., D. D.
Hills, Mr. William
*tHoDGE, Richard M., Rev., D. D.
Houghton, Mrs. Louise Seymour
HoYT, Arthur S., Rev., D. D.
Hudson, Frances L.
Hull, William C, Rev.
Humpstone, John, Rev., D. D.
Huyler, John S.
Jackson, Charles Edward, Rev.
Jacoby, Henry S., C. E.
Jenkins, E. O., Rev.
Johnston, R. P., Rev., D. D.
JoNTZ, Ida V.
JuDD, Orrin R.
Kaighn, Raymond Runlott
Keevil, Charles J., Rev., D. D.
Keith, Herbert C.
Kent, Robert J., D. D.
Kendall, Georgiana
Kundest, Olive Mae
Laidlaw, Walter, Rev., Ph. D.
Lansdale, Herbert P.
Lesher, a. L., B. a.
Lewis, Charles L.
Littlefield, Milton S., Rev.
Long, John D., Rev., A. M.
Longacre, Lindsay B., Rev.
Lord, Miss Isabel Ely
Lord, Rivington D., Rev., D. D.
Lynch, Frederick, Rev.
McAfee, Cleland B., Rev., D. D.
MacArthur, Robert S., Rev., D. D.,
LL. D.
MacClelland, George L., Rev.
McCarroll, William
MacDonald, Robert, Rev.
*McFarland, John T.
McGaffin, Alexander, Rev.
MacVannel, John Angus
Main, Arthur E., Rev. D. D.
Marshall, Benjamin T., Rev.
Melish, John Howard, Rev., S. T. B.
Merriam, George E., Rev.
Merrill, George Edwards, D. D.,
LL. D.
Merrill, Harry W.
Merrill, Robert Dodge, Rev.
Miller, Edward W., Rev., D. D.
Miller, Lillian B.
Mitchell, Mrs. S. S.
MouNTFORD, Lydia M. Von Finkel-
Murray, William D.
*Nason, George F., Rev., A. M.
Newton, Richard Heber, Rev., D.D.
fNiCHOLAs, John
North, Frank Mason, Rev., A. M.
D.D.
Ogden, Robert C.
osborn, f. w.
Parker, Horace J., D. D.
Patt, Herman George. A. B.
Pease, John D.
Pershing, Orlando B., Rev.
Peters, John P., Rev., Ph. D., D. D.
Pike, Henry H.
Platt, Caroline M.
PowLisoN, Charles F.
Raymond, Andrew V.V., D. D., LL. D.
Reed, Lewis T., Rev.
Reeder, R R., Ph. D.
Rhees, Rush, D. D., LL. D.
Richards, Charles H., D. D.
Richards, F. B.
Riggs, James Stevenson, D. D.
Robert, Henry M., Gen.
RowE, Stewart H., Ph. D.
Russell, James E., Ph. D.
Russell, J. Elmer, Rev.
Ryder, C. J., Rev., D. D.
Sawin, Theophilus p.. Rev., D. D.
Schmidt, Nathanial, Ph. D.
Scott, Robert Mr.
ScuDDER, Myron Tracy, A. M.
fSEE, Edwin F.
Seligsberg, Alice Lillie
Sewall, a. C, Rev., D. D.
Sewall, G. p., Rev.
Sexton, Wilson D., Rev.
Shaw, Charles Gray, Ph. D.
Sherman, Henry A.
Sherry, Norman B.
Silverman, Joseph, D. D.
Slater, John R., Ph. D.
Spencer, Nelson E.
Simmons, Harvey L.
Smith, Fred B.
Smith, Roelif B.
Smith, Thomas F., M. D.
Smith, William W., Rev.
Stevens, William Arnold, D. D.
Stewart, George B., D. D., LL. D.
Stewart, John A.
Stewart, J. W. A., Rev., D. D.
Stillman, T. E.
Stimson, Henry A., Rev., D. D.
St. John, Edward
Stoddard, Frank P.
tSTOKES, Olivia E. P.
Stoppard, Alice Hart
Strayer, Paul Moore, Rev.
Street, William D., Rev.
Strong, Josiah, Rev., D. D.
Taylor, Livingston L., Rev.
THE MEMBERS OF THE ASSOCIATION
5"
Taylor, Marcus B., Rev , D. D.
Taylor, William Rivers, Rev., D. D.
Thorne, Samuel, Jr.
Thorne, Samuel, Jr., Mrs.
Updegraff, Harlan, A. M.
VanSlyke, J. G., Rev., D. D.
Vincent, Marvin R., D. D.
Weed, Rebecca W., Mrs.
Weeks, Caroline B.
Wentworth, Russell A.
White, Sherman M., Rev.
Whiton, James M., Rev., Ph. D.
Whitteker, W. F., Rev.
Wilcox, Daniel L.
Wight, Andrew M., Rev.
WiKEL, Henry H.
Wilkinson, Mrs. Mary S.
Williams, Henry S., Ph. D.
Williams, Mary Clark
Williams, Richard R., Rev.
Woolworth, William S., Rev.
Wyckoff, Charles S.. Rev.
Wyman, Arthur J., Rev.
Wynne, John J., S. J.
Yarnell, D. E.
Zehring, Blanche, Ph. D.
Zimmerman, Jeremiah, Rev., D. D.,
LL. D.
institutions
Colgate University Library
Columbia University
Dodge, Morgan Library
Ethical Culture School
General Theological Seminary Li-
brary
Jewish Theological Seminary of
America
Library of the General Theologi-
cal Seminary
St. Stephens College
Syracuse Public Library
University of Rochester
NORTH CAROLINA
Bailey, Josiah W.
Cullom, W. R., M. a., Ph. D.
CuNiNGGiM, W. L., Rev.
Durham, Plato T.
Emery, C. M... Rev., A. M.
Gallandet, Hubert W., Rev., B A.,
B. D.
Goodrich, Frances L., Miss
HoBBS, Mary M.
Johnson, T. Neil, A. M.
McKelway, a. J.
Miller, Emma L.
Newlin, Thomas
Peques, a. W., Ph. D., D. D.
Potts, Joseph
Allen, Chas. J.
Clarke, Sidney
Dickey, Alfred E.
NORTH DAKOTA
Shaw, Edwin S., Rev.
Squires, Verjston P., A. M.
Stickney, Edwin H., Rev.
OHIO
Allen, Ernest Bourner, Rev.
Armstrong, E. W.
Barnes, C. W.
Barton, Frank M.
Bawden, Henry H., Rev.
Beachler, William H., Rev.
Benton, Horace
Boone, Richard G., A. M., Ph.D.
Bosworth, Edward I., D. D.
Bowers, Roy E., Rev., A. M.
Bradshaw, J. W., Rev., D. D.
BuDD, George S.
BuRNWORTH, E. Davis, Rev.
Carman, Augustine S., Rev.
Cheney, James Loring, Rev., Ph. D.
Church, A. B.
Clark, Davis W., D. D.
Clifford, Elizabeth
COWDERY, KiRKE L.
Gulp, W. T. Sherman, Ph.D., D. D.
Currier, Albert H., D. D.
Dabney, Chas. William, Rev., Ph. D.
LL. D.
Davies, Arthur E., Ph. D.
Day, William Edmund
Dibell, Edwin, Rev.
Dundon, Clarence E.
Evans, Mary, L^tt.D.
Foote, Robt. B , B a.
Eraser, John G., Rev., A. M., D. D.
Fullerton, Kemper, A. M.
Garber, L. Leedy, a. M.
Gilbert, Levi, Rev., D. D.
GoLDNER, J. H., Rev., A. M.
Greenlund, W. a.
Gries, Moses J.
512
THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Grossman, Louis, D. D.
Hanscom, Alice E.
Hanley, Elijah A , Rev., A M.
Harsh A, J. W., Rev.
Hatfield, Albert D.
Haydn, Howell Merriman
Helmer, John Sherman
Henry, Carl F., Rev., A. M.
Hiatt, Casper W., Rev., D. D.
HiLLis, W. A., Rev.
Hirchy, Noah C.
Hitchcock, Charles E., Rev.
Hitchcock, Joseph Edson
Houghton, Albert C.
Hunt, Emory W., D. D., LL. D.
HuTCHESON, Mary E.
Johnson, Theodore A., Rev.
Jones, Thomas Henry
Keith, Lucy E.
*KiNG, Henry Churchill, D. D
Lawrence, Martha E.
MacCracken, Anna M., Ph. D.
Matthews, Paul, Rev., A. M.,
LiTT. D.
Mattison, a. M.
Metcalf, Irving W., Rev.
Mills, Charles S., Rev., D. D.
Mitchell, Charles B., Rev.,
Ph. D., D. D.
Montgomery, Bertha Emeline, A. M.
Moore, Henrietta G., Rev.
Morris, George K., D. D. LL. D.
Nichols, John R., Rev., D. D.
Owens, John R.
Peckham, George A., A. M.
Perry, Alfred T., D.D.
Pettee, George D.
Phillipson, David, Rabbi, D. D.
Phillips, T. F., Rev., Ph. D., D. D.
Pike, Grant E., Rev.
Pond, Bert C.
Pond, Chauncey N., Rev., D.D.
Pratt, Byron C.
Pratt, Dwight M.. Rev., D. D.
Raymond, C. Rexford, Rev., D. D.
Reeder, Glezen Asbury, a. M., D. D.
Richmond, Louis O.
RiHBANY, Abraham M. Rev.
Roberts, Edward D.
Robertson, William N., Rev., A. M.
RowLisoN, Carlos C, Rev.
Scott, George, Ph. D., LL. D.
Shepardson, Daniel, Rev., Ph. D.
Shuey, Edwin L., A. M.
Shurtleff, G. H.
Simons, Minot O., Rev.
Smith, F. N., Mrs.
Smythe, George F., Rev., D. D.
Snedeker, Charles H., Very Rev.
sondericker, josephine e.
Stephan, John F., M. D.
Stevenson, Richard Taylor, Ph. D.
Thompson, William Oxley, D. D.,
LL. D.
Thwing, Charles F., D. D., LL. D.
Troup, James A.
Wakefield, E. B., A. M.
Walls, Alfred, Rev.
Welch, Rev. Herbert
Whitmore, Holmes, Rev., A.M., B. D.
Wilbur, Hollis A.
Winter, Alonzo F., Rev , S. T. D.
Wittendorf, J. H., Mrs.
Woodard, L. a., Mrs.
Wright, Henry Collier, Ph. D.
YoDER, Charles F., Rev.
Young, Jesse Bowman, Rev., D. D.
Zimmerman, Adam, Rev., B. A., M. A.
institutions
Buchtel College
Marietta College
Oberlin College Library
Ohio Wesleyan University
Otterbein University
Public Library of Cincinnati
OKLAHOMA
Denham, J. F.
institutions
Epworth University
OREGON
Bates, Henry L., Rev.
Edmunds, James
Farnham, Mary F.
Gilpatrick, Howard, Rev.
B. D.
Hill, Edgar P., Rev.
Hutchinson, Reno, A. B.
McGrew, Henry Edwin
A. B.,
Oakley, E. Clarence, Rev.
Ross, J. Thorburn
Smith, Howard N., Rev.
Smith, Wilfred Fernando, Rev
institutions
Pacific University
THE MEMBERS OF THE ASSOCIATION
513
PENNSYLVANIA
Anders, Howard S., M. D.
Antrim, Clarence D.
Archibald, Adams D., Rev.
Armstrong, Thomas M., Rev.
Arnold, N. T.
Bard, S. M.
Bartholomew, Allen R., Rev., D. D.
Bartlett, George Griffiths
Bartlett, J. Henry
Barton, George A., Ph. D.
Bartz, Ulysses S., Rev., A. M., Ph. D.
Berkowitz, Henry, Rabbi
Biddle, Elizabeth N.
Bishop, Frank D.
Blackall, C. R., Rev., D. D.
Blackall, C. R., Mrs.
Blankenburg, R., Mrs.
Blatt, James N., Rev.
Bomberger, Henry A., A. M., D. D
Bond, Elizabeth Powell
Bradshaw, a. H., Rev.
Brown, Herman E.
Brumbaugh, Martin G., Ph. D.,
LL. D.
Buchheit, John F.
BuTTERWiCK, Robert Reuben, Rev.
Cadbury, Emma, Jr., A. B.
Galley, Walter, Rev., D. D.
Camp, George R.
Carter, John
Cass AD Y, Ernest R. Mrs.
Chalfant, Harry Malcolm, Rev.,
A.M.
Chapin, W. H.
Clark, D. B., Rev.
Coffman, Wilmer E.
CoovER, M., Rev.
Cramer, W. Stewart, Rev., A. B.
Dana, Stephen W., D. D.
Day, Dwight H.
Delk, Edwin Heyl, Rev., D. D.
DiCKERT, Thomas W., Rev.
Dieffenbach, Albert Charles, Rev.,
A. B.
DiMM, Jonathan R., Rev., D. D.
Dorchester, Daniel, Jr., Rev., Ph.D.
D. D.
Douglas, Walter C.
Drisko, R. C, Rev.
*DuBois, Patterson
Dundore, Paul J., Rev., Ph. B.
Dyckenam, H. M., Rev.
fELKiNTON, Joseph, Rev.
Elliott, Alfred C, A. M.
♦Ellis, William T.
Evans, L. Kryder, Rev., D. D,
Evans, Milton G.
EwiNG, Homer H.
Flickinger, Stephen L., Rev.
Fowler, Bertha
Garrett, Alfred Cope, Ph. D.
Garvin, M. T.
Gast, F. a., Rev., D. D.
Greves, Rev., U. S.
Haines, Amos H.
Hasham, J. Henry, Rev.
Haviland, Walter Winship, A. B.
Hay, Robert L., Rev.
Heckman, Samuel B., M. A.
fHEINZ H. J.
Hoffman, Jno. W., Rev.
Holmes, Jesse H., Ph. D.
Houston, James W.
Howard, Josiah
Howard Phillip E.
Huber, Eli, D. D.
Hulley, Lincoln, Prof
Hutchinson, Edward S.
Jackson, Henry E., Rev.
Jenanyan, H. S., Rev.
John, Lewis F., A. M., D. D.
Johnson, E. E. S., Rev.
Jones, Philip L., Rev., D. D.
Jones, Rufus M., A. M., Litt. D.
Keirn, L. M., Rev.
Kennedy, Mrs. M. G.
Kerschuer. U. O. H., Rev.
Kloss, Charles L., Rev
Kressley, C. D., Rev.
Kribs, Herbert Guy, Rev.
Kriebel, Oscar S , A. M.
Kunkle,-Edw. C, Rev., A. B., D. B
Lanier, M. B., Rev.
LlCHLITER; McLlYAR HAMILTON
Llewellepc, Alice A
Lyte, Eliphalet Oram, M. S., A. M..
Ph. D.
MacAllister, James, LL. D.
McClenahan, David A.
McCormick, S. B., D. D„ LL. D.
McDevitt, Philip P., Rev.
McLean, Joseph K.
Messinger, Silas L., A. M., S. T. D.
Michael, Oscar S., Rev.
Miller, Rufus W., Rev., D. D.
Mills, J. S., Rev.
Morris, Margaretta
Myers, Tobias Timothy
Neff, Silas E., Ph. D.
NoBLiT, Joseph C.
Noss, Christopher, Rev.
Omwake, George Leslie, A. M.
Orner, George D.
oviatt, f. c.
Partridge, Warren G., Rev., M. A.
D. D.
Pepper, George Wharton
Perkins, Penrose
Potter, William P.
Ranck, Henry H., Rev.
514
THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Reed, George Edward, S. T. D.,
LL. D.
Reed, Luther D., Rev., Ph. D.
Rehrig, W. M., Rev., Ph. D.
Richards, George W.
Richards, Louis J., Rev.
RiTTENHOUSE, W. C.
Robertson, J. M., Rev.
RoMiG, Edwin Howard
Roop, Hervin U., Rev., A. M., Ph. D.
Roth, Charles E.
Rynearson, Edward, A. M.
Sanford, Caroline H.
Schaeffer, Nathan C, Ph. D., D. D.,
LL. D.
Senior, Daniel L., D. D.
Shaw, Charles F., Rev., D. D.
Shaw, Daniel W., Rev., D. D.
Singmaster, J. A., D. D.
Slade, William F., Rev.
Smith, Howard Wayne, Rev.
Smith, Norman J.
Soars, C. A., Rev.
Southworth, Franklin C, A. M.
S. T. D.
Spicer, R. Barclay
Stevenson. T. P.
Stewart, Everett
Sutherland, Allan
Swain, Joseph, LL. D.
Tatlock, William, Rev., A. M.
Thomas, M. Carey, Ph. D., LL. D.
Thomers, Henry H., Rev.
Tomkins, Floyd W., Rev., D. D.
Trumbull, Charles Gallandet
Tyler, Corydon C, Rev.
Walsh, Mary L., Miss
Walton, George A.
Walton, Joseph S., Ph. D.
Wanamaker, John, Hon.
Watson, Charles M., Rev.
Wickershane, William F.
WiEST, Edward Franklin, Rev.
Wilbur, J. Milnor, Rev.
Williams, Albert B., B. S., LL. D.
Williams, George G.
Winston, John C.
YouNT, A. L., Rev., D. D.
institutions
Bryn Mawr College
Dickinson College
First Presbyterian Church
Library Western University of Pa.
Meadville Theological School
Swarthmore College
PHILIPPINE ISLANDS
Chenoweth, a. E., Rev.
RHODE ISLAND
Anthony, Mary B., Miss
Bradner, Lester, Jr., Rev., Ph. D.
Butterfield, Kenyon L.
Corliss, George H., Mrs.
Dennen, Ernest J., Rev.
Diman, John B., Rev., A. M.
DowiNG, G. Fay
* Faunce, William H. P., D.D.
Fowler, Henry Thatcher, Ph. D.
Fuller, Arthur A., M. E.
Fuller, Frederic H.
Hazard, John W., Mrs.
Hood, William Lenoir, Rev.
HoRTON, Lyman G., Rev.
Ketchum, Arabella
McClelland, T. Calvin, Rev., Ph. D.
*McVicKAR, William N., Rev.,D.D.
S. T. D.
*Mead, George W., Rev.
Melden, Charles M., Rev., Ph. D.,
' D. D.
Root, Edward Tallmadge, Rev.
Root, Theophilus H., A. M.
Rousmaniere, E. S., Rev.
Sanderson, Edward F., Rev.
Selleck, Willard C, Rev.
Thompson, W. Ashton, Rev.
Waite, William H.
Wilson, George G., Ph. D
Wilson, Willard B.
TENNESSEE
Atkins James, Rev., A. M., D. D.
Beale, George Livingstone, Rev.
Carre Henry Beach
Carter, Thomas
Clarke, JameE., Rev.
tCuNiNGGiM, Jesse Lee, Rev.
Dabney, Charles W., Ph. D., LL. D.
Davison, J. O., Rev.
Ford, J. S., Mr.
Foster, R. V., D. D.
Grimstead, Wren J., Rev., A. B.
Hammond, J. D.
THE MEMBERS OF THE ASSOCIATION
51S
Henry, James R., Rev.
Hill, Felix R. Rev. D. D.
Hinds, J. I. D, Ph. D.
KiRKLAND, James H., Ph. D., LL. D.
Landrith, Ira, Rev.
Logan, William C, Rev., A. M.
Mannheimer, Leo Rabbi
McCuLLOCH, James Edward, Rev.,
A. B., B. D.
McGiLL, Stephenson W.
McKamy, John A., Rev.
Mitchell, David E.
Olson, Charles Wlllard
Peabody, Helen L.
Seymour, A. H., Rev.
Parker, Fitzgerald Sale, Rev.
Pllcher, M. B.
Provine, W. a.. Rev.
Root, James Winston
Rust, James Urmston
Shackford, John Walter, Rev., A. B.
B. D.
Taylor, William B., Rev.
Throop, Pharis T.
Tillett, Wilbur F., A. M., D. D.
Trawick, a. M. Jr., Rev., A. B., B. D.
Webb, John M., LL. D.
Webb, William R.
White, James Daniel, Rev.
Wiggins, B. L.
institutions
Belmont College for Young Ladies
Ward Seminary for Young Ladies
SOUTH CAROLINA
Carlisle, James H.
Carlisle, Mark L., Rev., D. D.
Duncan, Watson B., A. M.
Flinn, William J., Rev., A. B., B. D.,
D. D.
Snyder, Henry Nelson, Litt. D.
Thomas, A. J. S
SOUTH DAKOTA
Baker, Abram Laurel, Rev., A. B.,
S. T. B.
Hare, William Hobart, Rev., S. T. D.
Leach, Frank P., Rev.
Mattson, Bernard G., Rev.
Nicholson, Thomas, D. D.
Norton, Susan W.
Orr, E. a.. Rev.
Peabody, Helen L.
Seymour, A. H., Rev.
Thrall, W. Herbert, Rev.
Trefethren, Eugene B., Rev.
TEXAS
Downs, Francis Arthur, Rev., A. B.
Griggs, A. R., Rev., D. D.
Hall, Colby Dixon, Rev.
Hodges, B. A., Rev.
Joiner, R. E., Rev.
LowBER, James William Chancellor
Manton, Charles, Rev.
Moore, John M., Rev., Ph.D.
Oakes, R. Welton, Rev.
Peck, Jennie L.
Peebles, Francis H.
Robinson, Joseph M., Ph. D., Rev.
Smith, J. Frank, Rev.
White, Alfred T., A. B.
Woods, James H.
Yates, Callin W., Rev.
institutions
Baylor University
Prairie View State Normal and In-
dustrial College
Southwestern University
UTAH
Clemenson, Newton E., Rev
VERMONT
Barnes, Stephen G., Rev.
Cabot, Mary F.
Chapman, Edward M., Rev.
Davies, R. R., Rev., A. M.
Dee, Ellen Post
Davison, Rev., W. A.
Dole, Walter, M. A.
Ferrin, Allan C, Rev.
Greene, S. B., Mrs.
HoLDEN Arthur J
Si6
THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
KiLBURN, J. K., Rev.
Ladd, George Edwin, Rev.
LoDER, A. L., Rev.
Lyman, Louise H.
Miles, Harry R., Rev.
Mills, George Sherman, Rev.
Morris, Frank R., Rev.
Morse, Warren, Rev.
Osgood, Charles Wesley
Pennoyer, C H., Rev.
Phillips, George W., Rev., D. D.
Roundy, Rodney W., Rev.
Slayton, Henry A.
Smith, Clifford H., Rev.
Stocking, Jay Thomas, Rev., A. B.,
B. D.
Strayer, Luther Milton, Rev., A. M.
Wright, James Edward, Rev., D. D.
institutions
Norwich University
VIRGINIA
Belsan, Edward
Grammer, Carl E., Rev., S. T. D.
Haley, Jesse J., Rev., A. M.
Hicks, Joseph Emerson, Rev., A. M.
Jones, Thomas Jesse, A. M.
Mitchell, Samuel C, Ph. D.
Rockwell, Adeline B., B. L.
Totusek, Vincent, Rev.
institutions
The Protestant Episcopal Theo-
logical Seminary in Virginia
WASHINGTON
Anderson, L. F
Bur WELL; A. S.
burwell, e. b.
Cooper, Frank B.
Graif, Philip, Rev., D. D., A. M.
Greene, Samuel, Rev.
Hays, W. G. M., Rev., D. D.
Hendrick, Archer Wilmot
HORNE, I W.
Kilbourne, E. C, Dr.
Leech, William H., Rev., A. M.
Lewis, William H , LL. D.
Littlefield, George B.
Lyon, Elwood P., Rev , Ph. D.
McLeod, Donald
Merritt, W. C, Rev.
Nichols, J. F., Rev., A. B., B. D.
Penrose, Stephen B. L.
Rice, Austin, Rev.
Roots, Willard H., Rev., A. B., B. D.
Shorrock, Ebenezer, B. A.
Smith, Edward Lincoln, Rev.
Smith, Everett
Wood, W. D., Mr.
institutions
Whitman College
Library University of Washington
WEST VIRGINIA
Davis, William W., Rev., A. M.,
Ph D.
Deahl, J. N.
PuRiNTON, Daniel B., Ph. D., D. D.,
LL. D
institutions
West Virginia University
WISCONSIN
Beale, Charles H., Rev., D. D.
Blaisdell, James A., Rev.
Chapin, Robert C. A. M.
Cheney, B. Royal
Coffin, W. K.
Cory, I. L., Rev., B. D.
Deane, John Pitt, Rev.
Eaton, Edward D., D. D., LL D.
Edmunds, E. B., Rev.
Ferris, H. J., Rev.
Flett, George C, Rev., LL. B.
Greenwood, John William, Rev.
Frost, Edward W.
Halsey, Rufus Henry
Hannum, Henry Oliver, Rev.
Henderson, Herman C, A. M.
Hughes, Richard Cecil, D. D.
Kunkle, Edward C, Rev.
Magee, Harriet Cecil
McKenny, Charles
Myers, J. O.
Naylor, Wilson, S., A. M.- D. D.
THE MEMBERS OF THE ASSOCIATION
S17
Nicholas, R. W., Rev.
Parsons, J., Rev.
Plantz, Samuel, Ph. D., D. D.
Sage, A. H.
Salisbury, Albert, Ph. D.
Sawyer, Edgar P., Mrs.
Sawyer, Hermon L.
Shanks, L. E Rev.
Short, Wm. Harvey, Rev., A. M.
Sprowls, Thomas W., Rev.. S. T. D.
Stevens, Frank V., Rev.
Swart, Rose C.
Titsworth, Judson, Rev., D. D.
Tyrells, S. J. T.. Mrs., M. D.
Vaughan, Richard M., Rev.
Vaughn, Howard R., Rev.
Wilson, Alfred G., Rev.
Woods, Erville B.
institutions
Beloit College
University of Wisconsin
WYOMING
Williams, Theodore Charles, Rev.
NEWFOUNDLAND
Darby, Thomas B., Rev., B. A.
NOVA SCOTIA
Des Barres, F. W. W., Rev., B. A.
DeWolfe, Henry T., Rev.
Falconer, Robert A., Litt. D., LL.D.
Gillies, D. M., Rev.
Green, Adam S., Rev., A. M,
Jefferson, Selby, Rev.
MacKay, a H., LL. D., F. R. S. C.
Marshall, Eraser G.
Murray, Walter C; A. M.
Smith, William H., Rev., Ph. D.
ONTARIO
Bates, Stuart S., Rev., D. D.
Bond, G. J., Rev., B. A.
Cameron, C. J., Rev.
Carnahan, E. H.
Cross, George, A M., Ph. D.
Duncan, J. M. Rev.
Eakin, Thomas, Rev.
Eby, C. S., Rev., D. D.
Eraser, R. Douglass, Rev.
Hardy, E. A., B. A.
Harrison, Fosdick B., Rev.
Haw, J. A., Rev.
Hughes, J. L.
Laidlaw, Robert S., Rev.
Lyle, Samuel
Mackay, Edward W., Rev.
McDougall, W. C.
McFadyen, John Edgar, A. M.
Merrill, Bert Ward, Rev.
Moore, S. J.
NiE, Randolph F., Rev.
Quehl, Jacob
Sinclair, N. R. D., Rev., A. M.
SoMER^^LLE, J. Forrest
Sunderland, J. T.. Rev., A. M.
Thompson, John C.
Tracy, Frederick, Ph. D.
Unsworth, Joseph K., Rev
■ ASIA
Allen, Annie Teresa, A. B.
BRITISH AMERICA
Cox, Frederick W.
Flemming, David, Rev., B. A.
Huestis, Charles Herbert, Rev.,
M. A.
ALBERTA
I MacRae, a. O., Rev., Ph. D.
MANITOBA
Bowman, J. A., Rev., M. A.
Cann, W. Frederick, Rev.
Dingle, Geo. S.
Gordon, Chas. W., Rev., B. A.
Hart, Walter T.
McDiARMID, A. P.
MiLLiKEN, Robert, Rev., B. D.
Whidden, Howard P.. Rev.
5i8
THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
NEW BRUNSWICK
Boyd, Hunter, Rev.
Inch, James R., B. A., LL. D.
Ireland, George D., Rev.
Creelman, Harlan, Ph. D.
Day Frank J., Rev.
Hill, Edward Munson, D. D.
Lucas, Aquila, Rev.
MacOdrum, Donald, Rev., B. A.
Ross, William A., Rev., A. M.
QUEBEC
Lyman, Eugene Wm., Rev.
Watson, W. H., Rev.
BRITISH WEST INDIES
Coffin, F. J., A. M. Ph. D.
Archibald, George H.
Black, Arthur
I Seaton, D. T.
FOREIGN
ENGLAND
Bonner, Carey, Rev.
Griffiths, Hugh S.
DuTTON, Horace, Rev.
Bashford, J. W., Ph. D.
Boggs, S. a. D.,
Fleming, D. J., Prof.
FRANCE
I Goodrich, Chauncey W., Rev.
CHINA
I Roots, Logan Herbert, Rt. Rev.
DENMARK
Hansen, Hans Peder
INDIA
I Hume, R. A., Rev., D. D.
Levering, Frank H., B. S., LL. D.
JAPAN
Chappell, Benjamin, Rev.. A. M. | Gulick, Sidney L., Rev.
SOUTH AFRICA
institutions
Chimanimani School
SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Stacy. Ernest James
TURKEY
Gates, Caleb Frank, D. D., LL. D. | Lee, L. O., Rev., D. D.
* Contributor to this volume.
fLife member.
INDEX
Agencies, Co-ordination of, within a
Religious Community, 96
Alberta, Sunday School Association, 281
America, Field of Religious Education,
90
America's Mission, 64
American Institute of Sacred Literature,
379
American Literature and Social Con-
science, 38
Annual Survey of Progress, 9
Annual Survey of Work of Theological
Seminaries, 124
Anthony, Alfred W., Discussion, 133
Architecture, Religious, 403, 407
Arnold, Sarah Louise, Address, Foun-
dations of Religion and Morahty, 251
Art, Religious, Department of, 403
Art, The Service of, in Religion, 404,
455.
Artistic Studies in Theological Semina-
ries, 418
Association, The Officers of the, 483
Authority and Childhood, 12
B
Ballantine, W. G., Address, on Biblical
Knowledge for Sunday School Teach-
ers, 289
Barnes, L. C, Discussion, 183
Beatley, Clara B., Discussion, 185
Benner, E. A., Address, Camps for City
Boys, 439
Bible as an Aid to Self -discovery, 25
Bible and Moral Training, 75
Bible, as the Sunday School Text-book,
.74
Bible in Public Schools, 92
Bible Study in Y. M. C. A., 77
Bible Study by Communities, 202
Bible Study, Need of New Method, 153
Bible Study in Women's Clubs, 204
Bible Study, Organizations for, 10
Bible, The Educational Aid of the, 169
Bible, The Great Moral Book of Anti-
quity, 26
BibUcal Knowledge, Necessary for Sun-
day School Teachers, 289
BibHography of Books and Lessons for
the Sunday School, 207
Bisbee, Frederick A., Address, The
Religious Press and the Populariza-
tion of Bible Study, 371
Bitting, WilUam C, Address, Co-ordi-
nation of Agencies within a Religious
Community, 96
Books, Effect on Character, 348
Books, Theological, for Public Libra-
ries, 352
Bowerman, G. F., Address, Choice of
Religious Books for Public Libraries,
352
Boy, In the City, 439
Boy, In the Country, 429
Boys, Characteristics of, 303
Boys, Chivalric Idea in Work with, 433
Boys, Civic Idea in Work with, 436
Boys, Camps for, 439
Boys, Federating Church Work for, 445
Boys, General Alliance Workers.. 429
Boys, Religious Education of, 302
Boys' School, Formal Instruction in, 82
Boys, Ten Year^ of Work with, 454
Boys, Training of, in India, 274
Brand, Chas. A., Address, Bible Study
by Communities, 202
Brooklyn, Church Athletic League, 449
Brotherhood, Quickening the Sense of
Natural and Universal, 56
Burdett, G. A., Address, Educative
Power of Organ Music, 412
Burr, Everett D., Address, Formal
Instruction in the Sunday School, 71
Burr, Everett D., Address, Pastor as a
Teacher, 159
Burr, H. M., Address, Course in Philan-
thropies, 305
c
Camp for Boys, 439
Chamberlin, Miss Georgia L., Address,
Classification of Correspondence
Courses, 385
Child and The Church, 29
Child and Creed, 30
Child Nature, the Study of, 286
Child Nature Seeking God, 251
Child, The, as an Opportunity, 72
Child, The Spiritual Life of, 175
Children at the Summer Assembly, 399
China, Moral Education in, 267
Chivalry as a Motive with Boys, 434
Chivers, E. E., Address, Culture
Courses in Churches, 152
Christ as a Teacher, 147
Christian Associations, Department of,
293
Christian Culture Courses, 152
519
520
INDEX
Christian Endeavor Plans, 315
Christianity, The Mission of, to the
Worid, 60
Church as Factor in Rehgious Develop-
ment, 29
Church Interiors, Treatment of, 403
Church and School, Separation, 91
Church, The, as an Educator, 148
Church as a School, 98
Church, Co-operation with Other Agen-
cies, 100
Church Exteriors, Treatment of, 407
Church, The Educational Aims of the,
147
Church as an Educator, 148
Church Training, Educational Leaders,
5°
Church's Problem, of the Rehgious
Education of its People, 177
Churches and Pastors, Department of,
146
Cicero, Moral Effect of Reading, 227
Citizenship and Sentiment, 59
Citizenship, Sacredness of, 56
Citizenship, Training for, in the Family,
41
Citizenship, Training Boys in, 442
Civic Responsibihty in Youth, 339
City, The Problems of a Tvi^entieth
Century, 305
Classic Literature and Moral Teaching,
225
Coe, George A., Address, Formal
Instruction in Y. M. C. A., 76
College, Formal Instruction in, 84
College, Studies in Morals, 85
Colleges, What can They do for Re-
ligious Life of Students? iio^
College, An Experiment in Religious
Instruction in, 117
Commerce and Conquest, 65
Comparative ReUgion, The Influence of,
128
Confucius, Teaching of, 269
Conscience, Developing the Social, 37
Conscience, The Universal, 47
Conscious Relation to God, Bringing
the Individual to, 20
Conscious Relation to God, Rehgious
Education as an Aid to, 33
Consciousness of God in Children, 330
Continuity of Religious Education, 335
Convention, The Minutes of the, 461
Co-operation, What is Possible between
Roman Catholics and Protestants in
Religious Education, 102
Co-ordination of Agencies within a
Rehgious Community, 96
Correspondence Courses, Classification
of, 385
Correspondence Courses in Religious
Education, 279
Correspondence Instruction, Depart-
ment of, 374
Correspondence, Possibihtes of, 374
Correspondence, Place and Possibilities
of, in Rehgious Education, 374
Cosmopohtanism of Jesus, 62
Coulter, John M., Address, Science as
a Teacher of Morahty, 40
Council of Religious Education, Session
of, 86
Council of Religious Education, Work
for the Year, 86
Cram, R. A., Address, The Treatment
of Church Interiors, 403
Crothers, Samuel M., Discussion, 55
Cummings, Edward, Discussion, 155
Cuninggim, J. L., Address, Survey of
Correspondence Courses, 379
Curricula of Theological Seminaries,
143
Curriculum for the Sunday School, 188
D
Day, Charles O., Discussion, Decline
in Number of Students for Ministry,
13s
Dining-room Bible Class, 203
Du Bois, Patterson, The Sunday School
Curriculum, 188
Du Bois, Wilham E. B., Discussion, 53
E
Education of the Conscience, 48
Educational Aims of the Church, 147
Educator, Church as, 148
Elective System, Dangers of, 13, 126
Ethical Education, of Pubhc Opinion,
47
Ethics, Course in, 220
Evolution of the Western World, 63
Exhibit, Sunday School, 216, 174
Experiment in Rehgious Instruction in
a College, 117
Family, Its Place in Religious Educa-
tion, 324
Family Worship, 70, 328
Faunce, William H. P., Annual Sur-
vey, 9
Field of Rehgious Education in Amer-
ica, 90
Fergusson, E. M., Address, Summer
Sunday School Institutes, 390
Fisher, G. J., Address Brooklyn
Church Athletic League, 449
Fiske's, Law of Infancy of Race, 240
Fitts Ahce E., Address, Developing the
Consciousness of God in Children,
330
Fletcher, W. I., Address, Moral Value
of Reading, 348
INDEX
521
Forbush, W. B., Address, Summer
Assembly and the Moral Instruction
of Children, 399
Forbush, W. B., Address, Ten Years
of Work with Boys, 454
Formal Instruction in Religion and
Morals, 67
Forward Mission, Study Courses, 319
Foss, S. W., Address, The Public
Library and the Sunday School, 356
Foundation of Religion and Morahty,
245
Fourth Year in Theological Seminaries,
127
Froebel and the Child's Relationships,
73
G
Genetic, Method in Moral Develop-
ment, 241
George, A. J., Discussion, 237
Germany, Moral Education in, 261
Gilbert, Simeon, Address, Bible in the
Philippines, 107
God, Conscious Relation of Individual
to, 20
God, Direct Influence of, on One's Life,
20
Goodsell, Bishop D. A., Address, Christ
as a Teacher, 147
Gow, John R., Discussion, 157
Graded Sunday School Lessons, 210
Grant, W. H., Address, Missionary
Literature and Young People, 321
Greek Literature and Moral Teaching,
225
Griffith, Mrs. J. S., Address, On Bible
Study in Young Woman's Christian
Association, 298
Gunsaulus, Frank W., Address, Place
and Possibilities of Correspondence
Instruction, 374
H
Hall, Charles Cuthbert, President's
Annual Address, 3
Hall, Charles Cuthbert, The Mission of
Christianity to the World, 60
Hall, G. Stanley, Address, On High
Schools and Moral Training, 219
Hall, G. Stanley, Address, Formal
Instruction in the Home, 67
Hansel, John W., Address, Teacher
Training in Y. M. C. A Institute,
279
Harper, William Rainey, Address, What
can Universities and Colleges do for
the Religious Life of Students? no
Harris, George, Address, Formal In-
struction in the College, 84
Harrower, Pascal, Address, Annual
Survey of Sunday School Progress, 171
Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy,
276
Henderson, C. R., Address, Home in
Religious Education, 324
High Schools and Moral Training, 219
History, Modern, is Sacred, 155
Hitchcock, Albert W., Address, The
Church as an Educator, 148
Hodge, Richard M., Address, The
Sunday-School Exhibit, 216
Holcombe, Chester, Address, Moral
Education in China, 267
Home, Department of, 324
Home as a Community, 340
Home, Formal Instruction in Religion
in, 67
Home, Importance to Religion and
Morals, 68, 71
Home in Religious Education, 324
Home, Herman H., Address, Indirect
Education of the Will, 258
Horr, George E., Discussion, 131
Houston, D. J., Address, Federating
Church Work for Boys, 445
Hoyt, Arthur, Address, Literature as an
Expression of Social Ideals, 37
Huestis, Charles H., Address, Teacher
Training in Alberta, 281
Hume, Robert A., Address, Religious
Inculcation in India, 271
Hurlbut, J. L., Address, On Teacher
Training, 283
Hyde, William De Witt, Address, An
Experiment in Religious Instruction
in a College, 117
Hymns for Sunday School, 201, 196
Immanence of God, 23
Imperialism, The Spirit of, 65
India, Inculcation of Religion in, 271
Individual, How Bring into Con-
scious Relation to God, 20
Intellectual Expression of Experience,
165
J
Jackson, George A., Address, Profes-
sional Libraries of Modern Standard
of Ministry, 361
Jacobus, Melancthon W., Address, On
the Curricula of Theological Semina-
ries, 143
Jesus as a Model Teacher, 277
Jesus Christ, The Scientific Approach
to, 44
Journalism, Religious Purpose of, 372
Judson, Mrs. Charles N., Address, On
Bible Study in'Y. W. C. A., 298
Jump, H. A., Address, The Problem
the Country Boy, 429
Juvenile City League in New York, 442
522
INDEX
K
Kaighn, Edward B., Address, Reli-
gious Education of Boys, 302
King Arthur, Knights of, 434
King, Henry Churchill, Address, The
Bible as an Aid to Self-discovery, 25
King, Henry Churchill, Address, Uni-
versities and Religious Instruction,
"5
Knight, Edward H,, Address, Teacher
Training in the Hartford School, 276
Laboratory Method in Religious Educa-
tion, 73
Langdon, W. C, Address, Juvenile
City League, 442
Latin Literature and Moral Teaching,
225
Lawrence, William, Address, The
Church as a Factor in Personal ReU-
gious Development, 29
Leaders, Need of, in Rehgious Educa-
tion, 49
Lessons and Grading, 172
Lesson Helps, Dangers of, 290
Library Co-operation with the Sunday
School, 356
Libraries, Department of, 345
Libraries, Annual Survey of, 345
Libraries, Professional, for the Ministry,
361
Literature and Social Ideals, 37
Literature, English, and Moral Ideals,
232
Literature, Recent, on Religious Educa-
tion, 15
Lowell, D. O. S., Address, English Lit-
erature and Moral Ideals, 232
M
MacClintock, Mrs. W. D., Address,
Continuity of Religious Education,
335
Macdougall, H. C, Address, Music and
the Religious Life of Students, 121
Macfarland, Charles S., Address, Intel-
lectual Expression of Experience, 1 65
Macfarland, J. T., Address, On Teach-
er Training, 284
Macfarland, J. T., Address, The
Church's Problem, 180
Mackenzie, William Douglas, Address,
Annual Survey of Work of Theologi-
cal Seminaries, 124
Mackenzie, William Douglas, Address,
The Church's Problem, 182
MacLeish, Mrs. Andrew, Address,
Plans for the Home Department, 344
Martin, George H., Address, Formal
Instruction in the Public School, 80
Masseck, F. L., Address, Chivalric
Work with Boys, 433
McBee, Silas, Address, The Press and
the Missionary Movement, 365
McDowell, William Fraser, Address,
Direct Influence of God upon One's
Life, 20
Mead, George W., Address, Report on
Sunday School BibKography, 207
Meeser, S. B., Address, On Basis of
Union for Young People's Societies,
309
Messer, L. Wilbur, Address at Open-
ing Service, 38
Methodist Episcopal Church, Its Work
of Teacher Training, 283
Methods of Inculcating Religion and
Morals, 261
Ministers' Reading, 363
Ministry, Decline in Number of Stu-
dents for, 135
Minutes of Annual Meeting, 461
Missionary Movement, Educating the
Public by the Press, 365
Missionary Interest in Young People's
Societies, 318, 321
Missionary Literature and Young Peo-
ple, 321
Missions, The Modern Spirit, 60
Missions, The Study of, 154
Modernizing Pulpit Phraseology, 166
Moral Development, Aims and Pro-
cesses of, 239
Moral Duties, Papers on, by High
School Students, 81
Moral Equipment Reasonably Expected
of Graduates of Common Schools, 253
Moral Teaching in Common Schools,
254
Morals, Suggested Courses in, 68
Morals, Teaching of, in Public Schools,
80
Mother, The Place of, in Religious Edu-
cation, 333
Mother, The, in Religious Education,
69
Music, Organ, Educative Power of, 412
Music, What can It do for the Rehgious
Life of Students ? 1 2 1
N
Nash, Henry S., Discussion, 52
Nason, George F., Discussion, 197
National and Universal Brotherhood,
Sense of, 56
Nature Study and Religious Education,
70
Newspapers and Religious Intelligence,
366
Newspapers, Sunday, 367
INDEX
523
O
Old Testament the Great Religious
Book of Antiquity, 27
Organ Music, Power of, 412
Oriental Customs in Religious and
Moral Education, 267
Oriental Spiritual Reform, 64
Ovid, Moral Effect of Reading, 228
Painters, The Educative Value of the
Art, 415
Pastor as an Educator, 163
Pastor, The Educational Aims of, 158
Patton, Cornelius, H. Address, The
Pastor as an Educator, 163
Peabody, Endicott, Address, Formal
Instruction in the Preparatory School,
82
Pedagogy, Training in Religious, 277
Pedagogical Training for Sunday School
Teachers, 285
Peloubet, Sunday School Curriculum,
190
Perry, Alfred T., Address, Decline in
Number of Students for Ministry, 135
Philanthropies, Outline of a Course in,
305
Philippines, The Bible in the, 107
Phillips Brooks House, Harvard, 113
Pictures, Great, and Moral Education,
415
PoHtical Purity and Citizenship, 57
Pratt, Waldo S., Address, Artistic Study
in Theological Seminaries, 418
Pratt, Waldo S., Report on Worship'in
the Sunday-School, 194 ^?
Pray, J. S., Address, The Treatment of
Church Exteriors, 407
Prayer Meeting, Young People's, 309,
316
Preparatory School, Formal Instruction
in the, 82
President's Annual Address, 3
Press, Department of the, 365
Press, Religious and Popular Bible
Study, 371
Principles Underlying the ;;- Sunday
School Curriculum, 188
Pritchett, Henry S., Address, Ethical
Education of PubHc Opinion, 47
Proceedings of Annual Business Meet-
ing, 461
Processes of [Moral Development, 239
Programme for Sunday School Wor-
ship, 195
Progress in Religious and Moral Educa-
tion, 9, 14
Protestants and Catholics in Religious
Education, 104
Prussia, Moral Education in, 261
PubHc Libraries, Religious Books for,
352
Public Schools, Religious Instruction in,
93
Public Schools, Secondary Department
of, 219
Public Schools, Secondary, Moral Teach-
ing in, 219
Public Schools, Elementary, Depart-
ment^of, 245
Public Spirit and Private Interests, 58
R
Reading, The Moral Value of, 348
Religionsunterricht and its Results, 261
Renaissance, The Art of, 416
Revival, Need of, 132
Robson, Frank H., Address, Processes
of Moral Development, 239
Roman Catholics and Protestants, Can
They Co-operate in Religious Educa-
tion? 102
Russell, Eugene D., Discussion, 229
Sallust, Moral Effect of Reading, 227
Sanders, Frank Knight, President's
Address on Work of Council, 86
Science as a Teacher of Morality, 40
School City, The Plan of, 438
Schools, Common, and the Foundations
of ReUgion, 245
Schools, Common, Moral Influence of
253
Schools, Elementary Public, Depart-
ment of, 245
Schools, Public, Religious Education in,
80
Schools, Secondary, Department, 219
Schools, See Sunday Schools
Schools, Public, Formal Instruction in,
80
Schools, Preparatory, Formal Instruc-
tion in, 82
Scientific Attitude, The, 40
Scudder, M. T., Address, Civic Idea in
Work with Boys, 436
Self -discovery by Aid of Bible, 25
Sewall, John L., Address, The Sunday
Press and Rehgious Education, 367
Shahan, Thomas J., Address, What Co-
operation is now Possible in Religious
Education between Roman Catholics
and Protestants? 102
Shaw, William, Discussion, 315
Singing in the Sunday School, 196, 201
Sisson, Edward O., Address, Religions-
unterricht, 261
Small, Walter H., Address, Moral
Equipment Afforded by Common
Schools, 253
5^4
INDEX
Social Conscience, Developing a, 37
Social Conscience, through Literature,
53
Social Conscience, through Science, 40
Social Conscience, Ethical Education of,
47
Social Responsibility of Youth, 339
Social Service, 39
Sohdarity of the Modern World, 63
Spaulding, H. G., Address, The Educa-
tive Value of Great Paintings, 415
Starbuck, E. D., Address, Social and
Civic ResponsibiUty in Youth, 339
Starbuck, Edwin D., Address, Common
Schools and Foundations of ReUgion,
245
Stories, The Use of, in Religious Educa-
tion, 69
Street, J. R., Address, On Pedagogical
Training for Sunday School Teachers
285
Students? What can University do for
Religious Life of, no
Students ? What can Music do for ReU-
gious Life of, 121
Students for the Ministry, DecUne in
Number of, 135
Summer Assemblies, BibUcal Instruc-
tion at, 395
Summer Assemblies and the Moral
Instruction of Children, 399
Summer Assembhes, Department of, 390
Summer Sunday School Institutes, 390
Sunday Paper as a Moral Teacher, 368
Sunday Papers, History of, 368
Sunday Press and Moral Education, 367
Sunday School, Annual Survey of Prog-
ress in, 171
Sunday School Curriculum, 188
Sunday School, Department of the, 171
Sunday School, Formal Instruction in,
Sunday School Lesson Slips, 161
Sunday School, PubUc Library and the,
356
Sunday School Summer Institutes, 390
Sunday School Teacher Training, 276
Sunday School Teachers, training of,
283
Sunday School, Worship in the, 194
Taylor, S. E., Address, Missionary
Societies and Young People's, 318
Teacher, The Pastor as a, 158
Teacher, Public School, and Religion,
246
Teacher Training, Department of, 276
Teacher Training, Progress in, 171
Teaching, Method of, 184
Teaching, Theory of, in Y. M. C. A., 77
Teaching, The Sex Factor in, 172
Ten Years of Work with Boys, 454
Text-books, for Teachers of the Chil-
dren, 211
Theological Seminaries, Annual Survey
of Work of, 124
Theological Seminaries, Department
of, 124
Theological Seminaries, Artistic Studies
in, 418
Theological Seminaries, Uniform Cur-
ricula, 143
Training, of Sunday School Teachers,
276
Tucker, William J., Address, Sacredness
of Citizenship, 56
Tupper, Frederic A., Discussion, 223
u
Uniform Lesson System, 192
Unity of Agencies for Religious Educa-
tion, 1 1
Universities and Colleges, Department
of, no
Universities and Colleges, What can
they do for Religious Life of Stu-
dents? no
V
Virtues, Suggested Courses in, 68
Votaw, Clyde Weber, Address, Field of
Religious Education in America, 90
w
Wallace, Roy Smith, Address, Work of
the Phillips Brooks House Associa-
tion, 113
Walker, Williston, Discussion, 141
Welcome, Address of, 463
Wheelock, Lucy, Discussion, 199
Will, Indirect Education of, 258
Wellman, Hiller C, Address, Pubhc Li-
brary and Sunday School Library, 358
Will, The, in Teaching, 287
Whitin, E. Stagg, Discussion, 451
Willett, Herbert L., Address, Biblical
Instruction at Summer Assembhes.
395
Winship, Albert E., Address of Wel-
come, 463
Wood, Irving F., Address, The Church's
Problem, 177
Wood, Walter M., Address, Annual Sur-
vey of Christian Associations, 293
Wood, W. A., Discussion, 168
Work, Christian Training for, 154
Worship and Children, 32
Worship in the Sunday School, 194
Y. M. C. A. Institute and Training
School, 279
INDEX
52s
Y. M. C. A. Annual Survey of Progress
in Religious Education in Christian
Associations, 293
Y. M. C. A., Results of Religious Teach-
ing in, 78
Y. M. C. A. and Religious Education,
18, 76
Young Men and the New Evangelism,
36 . .
Young Men's Christian Association,
Formal Instruction in, 76
Young People's Societies, Department
of, 309
Young People's Societies, Basis for the
Union of, 309
Young People's Societies, Model Con-
stitution for, 311
Young People's Societies and Religious
Education, 17
Y. W. C. A., Annual Survey of, 293
Y. W. C. A., Bible Study in, 298
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